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Thinking God's Thoughts 
After Him 

A RETIRED MAN'S MEDITATIONS 
By 

HENRY MELVILLE KING, D.D. 

PASTOR EMERITUS OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 

Author of Mary's Alabaster Box,'' *'Our Gospels," The Messiah in 

the Psalms," ''Why We Belie've the Bible," "Religious 

Liberty," "The Baptism of Roger Williams," 

"John My lis," "Sir Henry Vane, Jr." 

etc, etc. V^ 



'M^ff^:^ 




BOSTON: THE GORHAM PRESS 

TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED 



Copyright, 1914, by Henry M. King 



All Rights Reserved 






MAY --3 ':| 9 14 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



5CU374040 



r 



^ 1^ 

J 1 PREFACE 

^ t^ It is for the purpose of encouraging men to 
^ think God's thoughts after Him that these chap- 
ters containing some of " the meditations of a 
retired man " (to borrow a phrase from Sir Henry 
Vane, Jr.) have been collected, and are offered 
to the public. God's thoughts, when they become 
man's thoughts, determine character and destiny. 
" You shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free," said the infallible Teacher sent 
from God for the distinct purpose of making 
known to men the mind and will of the Father. 

The original plan in preparing this little vol- 
ume for the press contemplated a short preface on 
" Certainty of Faith." But that important topic 
would not allow itself to be compressed within the 
limits of a narrow preface, but claimed a chapter, 
though brief, for itself. The discussion is still 
altogether too brief, measured by the importance 
of the theme. It will serve, however, to suggest 
the possibility and the necessity of having a definite 
apprehension of that definite, saving " faith once 
delivered to the saints." May the promised 
Spirit of Truth bless every effort, however hum- 

3 



THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 
AFTER HIM 



Thinking God's Thoughts 

CHAPTER I 

CERTAINTY OF FAITH 

CAN we know the mind of God? Of course 
the finite mind cannot fully comprehend the 
Infinite Mind. But it is generally believed that 
God has revealed Himself in the moral nature of 
man, who was created in his image; in the physi- 
cal universe which, as the Psalmist affirmed, de- 
clares his glory; in his dealings with his intelli- 
gent creatures, which have enabled men to say, 
" There is a Divinity which shapes our ends " ; 
and above all in the Revelation which we call pre- 
eminently and in harmony with its own claims, 
" the Word of God "; and it is believed that He 
has revealed Himself sufficiently to meet all the 
practical purposes of this life, and to instruct and 
prepare men for the life to come. The great 
Teacher said, " This is life eternal to know Thee 
the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou 
hast sent." Man's highest ambition and chief 

9 



10 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

glory should be, as far as possible, to know the 
mind of God, and to think his thoughts after Him. 
All other knowledge is unsatisfying and unim- 
portant in comparison with this. 

Man's tendency is to philosophize about what 
is revealed, and to speculate beyond what is re- 
vealed, and hence we have changing and contra- 
dictory views of religious truth, a;id idle conjec- 
tures, which are born of human ignorance, and 
have only a human basis of authority. A safe 
and incontrovertible canon of interpretation is 
this: "The obvious meaning of the Word of 
God is the Word of God," as binding in the 
twentieth century as in the second. To affirm 
that Christianity has not a definite historical 
quantity is to repudiate it altogether. 

It would seem that with so many sources of 
knowledge there should be a satisfying degree of 
fullness and a reasonable degree of unanimity. 
The truth of God does not change, and is always 
made known as the truth of God to the willing 
and obedient spirit. " He that willeth to do his 
will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of 
God," 

The truth of God is unaffected by divergent in- 
terpretations, or by changing climes or centuries. 
Some people are led astray, it is to be feared, by 
the specious plea that truth must be expressed in 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH ii 

terms of modern thought, which often covers a 
wide departure from or an actual denial of the 
truth of God. As it is frequently used it covers 
a multitude of heresies. Some theologians seem 
to have adopted the famous saying of Heraclitus, 
" All things are in a state of flux, and nothing 
abides." The faith of yesterday is discarded and 
outgrown to-day by reason of supposed new light. 
The old and the tested must give place to the 
ever-changing modern, and the more modern the 
modern is the more acceptable it sometimes seems 
to be, until a recent English writer, himself a mod- 
ernist, is constrained to declare that " Modern 
lives of Christ have become too modern." In 
like manner it may be said that some modern in- 
terpretations of the Bible and revealed religion 
are too modern. If the modern thought of to- 
day is to give way to the more modern thought 
of to-morrow, the time will soon come, if it has 
not come already in some quarters, when Christ 
will not be able to recognize his own Gospel, and 
the note of finality and universality which rings 
out clearly and unmistakably in the great commis- 
sion, will be silenced forever. Another English 
writer declares that American Christianity is now 
divided into two schools. " The one is ortho- 
dox. . . . The other school seems to have sacri- 
ficed almost everything which makes Christianity 



12 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

distinct from a temporary philosophy. Its mem- 
bers have the bad habit of preaching eugenics in 
the place of the Gospel. They appear to be 
afraid of the great Epistles and the nobler pas- 
sages of the Gospels, and are apt to speak in terms 
which would suggest that there was nothing dis- 
tinctive in Christianity which can make it an ab- 
solute and universal faith. They have become 
afraid of the historian and the natural scientist. 
Unless they are careful they will prove to have 
sold the pass to the enemy from an unmanly and 
needless timidity." Professor Josiah Royce in 
'' The Problem of Christianity " frankly says, 
" What views or types of views are, or ought to 
be, characteristic of the modern man, hardly any 
of us will wholly agree in defining. And if there 
is any typical modern man, he would seem, at first 
sight, to be a creature of a day. To-morrow 
some other sort of modern man must take his 
place. And of the modern man of a future cen- 
tury we now cannot even know the race, much 
less. It would seem, the religious creed." 

We are hearing much In these days about *' a 
progressive revelation," a phrase which probably 
does not always mean the same thing on different 
lips. No one doubts that God, the God of na- 
tions and of our lives, Is constantly revealing Him- 
self in human history and in personal experience 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 13 

to those who are wise enough to detect his pres- 
ence and his guiding purpose. But when the 
technical term, Revelation, is employed, as it con- 
stantly is, to denote the plan of salvation unfolded 
in the Bible In the prophetic history of God's 
ancient people and in the life, teachings, death, 
resurrection and completed mission of his only 
begotten Son, our Lord, it can be called progres- 
sive only in the sense of an advancing conquest 
to itself of the faith of men and nations, but not 
in the sense of an Increase or modification of its 
original content and substance. Christ com- 
manded that his Gospel, the Gospel which He 
committed to his disciples, should be preached in 
all the world to every creature. The apostle 
Paul expressed his astonishment that men should 
for a moment be tempted to surrender that Gos- 
pel for another, which was '' not another," and 
pronounced an anathema upon those who yielded 
to the temptation. Christ's Gospel could not be 
duplicated or outgrown. For it there was no 
possible substitute, and never would be. 

President Arthur T. Hadley, speaking of 
" some Influences In modern philosophic thought," 
says truly enough, " Fashions in thinking have 
changed nearly as fast as fashions in dress. Sys- 
tem has succeeded system with bewildering fre- 
quency. The idol of to-day is the antiquarian 



14 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

curiosity of to-morrow." But when he or others 
imply that similar changes are to be expected and 
are actually taking place, not only in the fashion 
of religious thinking, but in the substance of re- 
vealed truth, so that they constitute a progressive 
revelation, the implications are utterly without 
warrant. President Hadley says, " The poet of 
to-day, like the Hebrew poets of old, is essentially 
a prophet, the bearer of a progressive revelation; 
one of a historical chain of seers, feeling after 
God, if haply they may find Him, and each in his 
own way bringing men a little nearer to the 
truth." There seems to be ample evidence that 
the inspired Psalmist not only felt after God, but 
that he actually found Him, and that his inspira- 
tion was of a unique kind, altogether different 
from that of Kipling and Walt Whitman, more 
authoritative and commanding than theirs, a bet- 
ter and truer and more trustworthy revealer of 
God and duty and the spiritual nature of man, 
and not only not surpassed by, but not to be 
classed with, the progressive inspiration of the 
latest modern poets. 

As an illustration of the continued progress in 
the fashion and substance of poetic religious think- 
ing. President Hadley makes the following com- 
parison. " No longer do we content ourselves 
with saying, as Tennyson did. 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 15 

" Our wills are ours, we know not how, 5 

Our wills are ours to make them thine." 

We deem it a truer, as well as a nobler conception 
of life, to say with the more modern poet, 

" East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, 
Forth to a feast we fared, the work of the will to do. 
Pillar of cloud by day, by night a pillar of fire, 
Sons of the will, we fought the fight of the will, our sire." 

We are prompted to ask, is it true that this is 
^' a truer and nobler conception of life," that the 
enthronement of the human will is indicative of 
genuine progress? Is not the submission of the 
human will to the divine will, and its harmoniza- 
tion with the revealed will of God, the method 
and the secret of the highest manhood? Christ 
disclosed the supreme motive and inspiration of 
his perfect life, when He declared, " I came not 
to do mine own will, but the will of Him that 
sent me.'' It would seem, then, that the *' pro- 
gressive revelation " so called, as manifested in 
recent poetry, carries us not only beyond the 
teaching of Tennyson and David, but even beyond 
the wisdom of God as revealed in the teaching of 
Jesus Christ. What the next generation of 
poets, ^' the bearers of a progressive revelation," 
will attain unto we can scarcely imagine. We 
must modestly confess with Professor Royce, *' we 



i6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

now cannot even know the race, much less the re- 
ligious creed." 

But in all seriousness, the truth of God, re- 
vealed in his Word, if it is the truth of God, 
should control and determine modern thought, 
and not be controlled and modified by it. New 
thought is not always or necessarily true thought. 
A change of view is often mistaken for growth 
and progress. That there is a legitimate growth 
and progress, the Scriptures plainly avow. But 
" growth in grace and in the knowledge of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ " cannot be under- 
stood as meaning the rejection of revealed truth 
or a modification of it, but evidently a deeper ap- 
prehension and a richer experience of it, not a 
growth out of, but a growth in and into, that is 
the normal and expected development of the be- 
liever in Christ by the use of the means which 
He has provided from the beginning, for the use 
of the earliest disciples and also of the latest. 
In his able volume, " The Christian View of God 
and the World" (p. 25), Dr. James Orr says, 
*' Bit by bit, as the ages go on, we see more clearly 
the essential lineaments of the truth as it is in 
Jesus; we learn to disengage the genuine truths 
of Christ's Gospel from human additions and cor- 
ruptions; we apprehend their bearings and rela- 
tions with one another, and with new truths, more 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 17 

distinctly; we see them in new points of view, de- 
velop and apply them in new ways. All this Is 
true, and it is needful to remember it, lest to 
temporary points of view, and human theories 
and formulations, we attribute an authority and 
completeness which in no way belong to them. 
But it does not by any means follow from this that, 
therefore, everything in Christianity is fluent, — 
that it has no fixed starting-points, no definite 
basal lines, no sure and moveless foundations, 
no grand determinative positions which control 
and govern all thought within distinctly Christian 
limits, — still less that, in the course of Its long 
history, theology has achieved nothing, or has 
reached no results which can fairly be regarded 
as settled." The strangest delusion of our times 
Is the exaltation of the fickle and Illusive Zeitgeist 
to the position of supreme arbiter in the realm of 
revealed truth. Anyone familiar with the prog- 
ress of religious discussion through the Christian 
centuries knows that the so-called modern thought 
Is not so modern, for the most part, after all. 
Every truth of revelation has been called In ques- 
tion again and again In the long past by the sup- 
posed spirit of the time, and over against It has 
been arrayed the " new thought " which has had 
Its little day and won a limited following. Dis- 
carded error ever and anon Is revived, and poses 



1 8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

as newly discovered truth. One of the best pre- 
ventives against erroneous views of religious 
truth, Is familiarity with church history. 

In a volume which has been recently published, 
entitled '' Foundations of Christian Belief In 
Terms of Modern Thought," and containing es- 
says by seven Oxford men, the foundations have 
been so effectually undermined that the reader is 
compelled to ask, " If the foundations be de- 
stroyed, what shall the righteous do? " One of 
the seven essayists, having repudiated the aur 
thority of the Scriptures as well as of the Church, 
declares, " Forms and habits of thought change 
from age to age, and thus In a limited sense new 
theologies are required." He is constrained to 
say, however, " But unless we are to suppose the 
Christian thinkers of the past to have done their 
work wholly amiss, we ought not to expect to find 
the new theologies turning out to be radically at 
variance with the old. Human nature, after all, 
varies but little from age to age, and Jesus Christ 
Is the same yesterday, to-day and forever." He 
then strangely adds, " He who would teach a new 
truth or reject an old, . . . must face the prima 
facie likelihood that his own prophecy may turn 
out false." It would be a thought distressing 
beyond expression that the ultimate truth, the 
saving truth of God, the wisdom that is able to 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 19 

make wise unto salvation and eternal life, has 
not been apprehended by the fathers, and is not 
at the present time positively attainable, and that 
we are consigned to the deplorable condition of 
those who are " ever learning and never able to 
come to the knowledge of the truth." 

The essential truths of Christianity are facts, 
not fancies or theories. The fundamentals 
though often assailed, are among the things which 
*' cannot be shaken." Men may differ as to non- 
essentials, but be solid as to the fundamentals. 
The mythical theory of interpretation has received 
little favor at the judgment-bar of enlightened 
human reason. There is a wonderful harmony 
and consistency between the character and the 
words and the deeds of Christ. Accept the fact 
of his supernatural origin and nature, and all else 
is supernaturally natural; it is just what would be 
expected, and occasions no surprise. The person 
of Christ stands out in clear outline like the sum- 
mit of some lofty mountain against a cloudless 
sky, not cold and snow-capped, but warm, glow- 
ing and glorified in the light of the setting sun; 
rather He is like the sun itself, shedding his light 
upon the loftiest summits of human thought and 
into the deepest valleys of human experience. He 
is the great outstanding miracle of Christianity. 
He still lives in the lives and the institutions of 



20 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

men and nations. He was taken up out of the 
sight of his followers, but his Influence yet sur- 
vives, Increasing from century to century. Every 
new generation In the progress of the Christian 
centuries Is adding Its additional weight to the In- 
creasing volume of Christian evidences. The 
highest civilization shows abundant fruits of 
Christ's presence and Influence In the world. As 
another has said, " Christ has changed the map 
of the world." As you cannot classify Him, 
neither can you annihilate Him. The doubter 
and denier, not the believer. Is compelled to at- 
tempt the task of justifying himself In the eyes 
of men. Dr. Jesse B. Thomas has said, *' If 
Christians believe the Bible superhuman, and ac- 
cept the revelation it makes of things beyond proof 
on its testimony, they show themselves neither 
unscientific nor unphllosophic." " Probability is 
the guide of life," as Bishop Butler long ago 
wisely said. Christianity, at first believed on rea- 
sonable evidence to be of divine authority, offers 
to demonstrate that authority In personal experi- 
ence to him who will " do the will of God." Its 
eternal challenge is " come and see." Probabil- 
ity may be so convincing, when acted upon, as 
to become absolute certainty. If Christ and 
Christianity do not furnish a basis for certainty 
of faith, there is nothing trustworthy in human 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 21 

knowledge, history or experience, the history of 
men and of nations Is nothing but a dream, and 
the world Itself a great unreality. 

There may be honest doubt In a mind willing 
to be convinced and honestly seeking after truth, 
but not yet wholly persuaded of Its validity. Such 
a mind Is never kept waiting long. Christ will 
come to It as to Thomas, and lead It from a state 
of painful uncertainty to a full confession and an 
assured peace. But It Is easy for a man to de- 
ceive himself. He may think he Is simply in 
doubt and In a state of uncertainty, when he Is 
already rooted and grounded In error. " The 
heart Is deceitful above all things." A Scotch- 
man is reported to have said, " he was willing to 
be convinced, but he should like to see the man 
who could convince him." A man's so-called 
doubts may be little less than bald and obstinate 
denials. Dr. Van Dyke speaks of men " whose 
doubts were more dogmatic than dogmas." Prof. 
Shaller Mathews says, " There is no dogmatism 
so Intolerant as that of unbelief." To deny a truth 
Is to affirm Its opposite. A creed of negations, 
If It was possible, would be as useless as It would 
be morally indefensible. Faith, and faith alone, 
gives strength of character and of purpose. 

The will to believe is a sacred right, and is as 
indicative of Intellectual freedom as the will to 



22 THINKING GOD^S THOUGHTS 

deny. In revealed religion, as well as in accepted 
science and accredited history, there are certain 
well established and unalterable facts, which con- 
stitute a creed. To hold such a creed is no sac- 
rifice or infringement of personal liberty or in- 
tellectual freedom. Liberty is not lawlessness 
and unrestrained license. True freedom is not 
freedom to do wrong or to believe a falsehood. 
Civil liberty is liberty regulated by law. Intel- 
lectual liberty is liberty regulated by truth. If 
revealed truth, clearly enunciated and easily com- 
prehended, does not hold men, their freedom is 
not the freedom that truth imparts. Openness 
of mind does not imply emptiness of mind, or a 
mind that contains no ascertained beliefs, and no 
deposit of sacred and verifiable truth. Unset- 
tledness of conviction is no evidence of superior 
intellectuality. Great thinkers have been great 
believers from the days of Paul and Augustine to 
Jonathan Edwards, and from Jonathan Edwards 
until now, who have believed that God, in his in- 
finite wisdom and grace, has given to the world 
a permanent and authoritative standard of faith, 
and have been unaffected by the ever changing, 
anti-evangelical Zeitgeist, which has been much 
more formidable and influential in other days than 
it is at the present time. Doubt is now, as Dr. 
Jesse B. Thomas has said, one manifestation of 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 23 

" the universal restlessness of our time which pro- 
tests against the intrusion of authority in any 
sphere. In politics, in Industrial life, In social 
ethics, in domestic relations, in fashion of dress, in 
amusement, in journalism. In literature, in personal 
behavior, there is a defiant and almost deafening 
outcry against the tyranny of ' tradition,' of con- 
ventionality, of custom, of fixity in law or institu- 
tion. Every existing institution becomes the sub- 
ject of criticism and of proposed readjustment to 
fit the needs of the Zeitgeist. It might well be 
expected, then, that a new fashion In religion 
would be also proposed." It Is claiming too much 
to assert that all present theological dissent is the 
result of accurate scholarship or of unusual mental 
acumen and a careful rewelghing of the grounds 
of religious belief. Many Biblical scholars on 
both sides of the Atlantic, of recognized standing, 
find the legitimate scholarship of the present time 
strongly confirmatory of faith in the Bible as the 
Word of God. Fresh attacks always call forth 
fresh and stronger defenses. To possess no fixed, 
settled convictions, Instead of being commendable 
and matter of boasting, may be proof of culpable 
neglect or Intellectual Impotence. Certainty of 
belief produces the truest spiritual liberty as well 
as abiding peace of mind. The possession of 



24 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

truth Is Infinitely better than the fruitless and end- 
less search after truth. 

Moreover, Instead of vainly exploring the un- 
known and the unknowable, and Indulging In un- 
verlfiable and useless speculations, men should 
rejoice that so much has been made known, and 
hold fast to the truth which has been plainly re- 
vealed. An aged minister once said to my youth- 
ful mind, perplexed by the mysteries of life and 
death, of God and the future, as we came away 
from a funeral-service In which we both had par- 
ticipated, " Let us not be troubled about the un- 
known, which a wise God has not seen fit to re- 
veal; let us rather thank God that we know so 
much." 

Christ's mission was not a failure. He said, 
" I speak the things which I have seen with my 
Father," and declared Himself to be " the way 
and the truth and the life." He was " God man- 
ifest In the flesh." He conditioned disclpleship, 
spiritual freedom, salvation, eternal life upon the 
knowledge of his Word and continuance therein. 
He Is still " the light that llghteth every man that 
Cometh Into the world." His light can never be 
dimmed or superseded. All human lights pale 
before It. He Is the. central sun In the moral and 
spiritual heavens. To be his disciples and learn 
of Him Is to walk In the light, which can never 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 25 

lose its illuminating and life-giving power, and is 
destined to dispel the darkness of doubt and ig- 
norance and sin, which now beclouds human 
minds. Certainty of faith can be found in Jesus 
Christ, and is ever authenticating itself in Chris- 
tian experience. 

The fathers had great strength of faith and 
clearness of faith, because they had deep and 
thorough experiences. It is not only true, as 
Goethe says, that '' What you have inherited from 
your fathers, you must earn for yourself before 
you can call it yours," but it is also true that what- 
ever of religious faith you have inherited from 
your fathers you must experience for yourself be- 
fore you can truly call it yours. Experience not 
only holds the title deed of faith, but it Is its test 
and its certain verification. " Now we believe," 
said the Samaritan villagers, *' not because of thy 
saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and 
know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of 
the world." 

Robertson Smith makes this confession, " If I 
am asked why I receive Scripture as the Word o'f 
God and as the only perfect rule of faith and life, 
I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant 
Church, because the Bible is the only record of 
the redeeming love of God, because In the Bible 
alone I find God drawing near to man In Christ 



26 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Jesus, and declaring to us In Him his will for our 
salvation, and this record I know to be true by 
the witness of his Spirit in my heart, whereby I 
am assured that none other than God Himself is 
able to speak such words to my soul." 

An experimental religion Is the only religion 
that has value, and the only religion that gives 
promise of permanence. No man Is qualified to 
judge Christian truth, or to determine Its reality 
and genuineness, unless he has seen Its fruits and 
felt Its power In his own soul. His spiritual sen- 
sibilities must be first quickened and his spiritual 
eye opened. " These things are spiritually dis- 
cerned." A faith which Is deeply rooted In per- 
sonal experience Is not likely to weaken or change 
or perish. Modern doubt and Infidelity are often 
born of a lack of experience or of a religion of 
form and ceremony, which lays the supreme em- 
phasis upon some outward act or rite, and Ignores 
the Inward life. What Is needed In our time and 
In all times to preserve our Christianity as a di- 
vine a,nd authoritative religion for the world Is not 
a new Interpretation or a new philosophy of re- 
ligion or a progressive revelation (If such a thing 
were possible and within the power of man to 
accomplish), but a deeper and richer experience 
of the truth as It Is In Jesus, men who believe be- 
cause they have tasted and tested, and have felt 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 27 

their souls responding penitently, humbly, affec- 
tionately and approvingly to the great unchanging 
verities of revealed truth. We are not straitened 
in God or In his truth, which is able to save to 
the utmost in this and every generation, but we 
are straitened in ourselves. 

The deeper experience will give certainty to 
faith in the pulpit and in the pew. Ministers will 
then be Indeed ambassadors for Christ, bearing 
a certain, distinct message. They will " preach 
the Word," not human opinion which changes 
from year to year, and possibly from week to 
week, but God's truth, divine, authoritative, un- 
alterable, and divinely adapted to the spiritual 
needs of men. Whether the hearers believe what 
the preacher preaches or not, they must believe 
that he believes It, and that he believes it to be 
God's message entrusted to him. Otherwise the 
influence of his preaching will be nil, and worse 
than nil. A minister without definite faith, born 
of a vital Christian experience and certified as to 
its divine character, would be out of place in a 
Christian pulpit. He has mistaken his calling. 
President Henry Churchill King does not hesi- 
tate to say, " The moral or spiritual prophet, who 
speaks, as out of his own insight, what he has 
only caught up from another. Is himself a fraud, 
and cannot help another Into reality of life." 



28 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

A minister of Christ cannot know everything. 
There are vast realms of knowledge beyond his 
ken. But there are some things which he must 
know, and know for a certainty, If he would be 
a faithful steward of the grace of God. The 
Christian pulpit stands for a distinct something in 
all lands and In all ages. It Is founded upon a 
definite message, which has created it and justi- 
fies its existence. It is to give no uncertain sound, 
but an authentic proclamation of prescribed truth. 
It is not a searcher after truth or a discoverer of 
new truth, but a possessor and proclaimer of ac- 
cepted truth. It Is not an Interrogation point, 
or a weather-cock veering with the changing wind. 
Its finger is the magnetized needle, pointing in- 
variably and surely to the star in the heavens. 
The true minister Is to be a safe leader who 
knows the way through the wilderness of con- 
flicting opinions, and Is able to guide others In 
it, a competent instructor who has himself been 
instructed and is not carried about by every wind 
of doctrine, and a believer whose faith rests se- 
curely upon the solid rock of revealed and ex- 
perienced truth, and who can say with humble 
assurance, " I know whom I have believed." 

Professor William Adams Brown of Union 
Theological Seminary says, " The world has a 
right to ask of the Christian minister that he 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 29 

knows what he believes and why he believes it. 
. . . It has a right to ask of the man who speaks 
to it of God's continuing power to renew and 
to transform, that his own life should evidence 
the truth of his words," in others words, that the 
truth preached should be illustrated and confirmed 
in the experience of every preacher. 

A church that would save the world from the 
dominion and penalty of sin, and introduce it into 
the fellowship and peace of God, that would 
reform and purify society in all its diseased con- 
ditions and bring in the kingdom of Heaven, must 
know how to sing in the future as the church has 
loved to sing in the victorious past, that old 
eighteenth century hymn of unshaken confidence, 

" How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
Is laid for your faith in his excellent Word." 

If there is no certainty of faith, that hymn by 
George Keith must be discarded and expunged 
from our hymn books, as a past superstition, and 
its echoes only come down to us from a happier 
time. " Interpreted in terms of modern doubt " 
(a slight change in words, but possessing the old 
meaning as often used) , it would read, 

You have no foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
Laid up for your faith in his uncertain Word. 

But we are assured that the faith of Christ's 



30 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

true followers is much more precious to Him 
than gold that perisheth, that the foundation of 
God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord 
knoweth them that are his, and that the faith 
once delivered to the saints, unchanged and reg- 
nant, will continue to triumph over all error and 
denial, as well as over all the changing theories 
of so-called progressive thought. A faith that 
has wrought such marvelous transformations in 
human character and life, and has produced such 
conspicuous results in moral sentiment, in legisla- 
tion and government, in social customs and civi- 
lization itself, has proved its divine origin, and 
established its claim to be worthy of all accepta- 
tion. It needs not to be exchanged, and cannot 
be improved upon. It is to continue to be su- 
preme in the realm of moral and religious thought. 
As unfolded at the beginning, having upon it the 
stamp of Heaven's mint, it is to dominate all 
thinking, however modern, and to pass current to 
the end of the world. Like its divine Author it 
is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. 

Principal Fairbairn says, " You will find many 
a beautiful proverb in Seneca; you will get many 
a fine ethical principle in Plato; you will find in 
Stoicism some of the most exalted precepts that 
human ethics have ever known. But mark you 
one thing, you will never discover that these ele- 



CERTAINTY OF FAITH 31 

vated the common life of man, . . . made the 
bad good or the Impure holy. Where they failed, 
Christ succeeded with splendid, glorious success. 
He made out of the very outcasts men that be- 
came saints of God." The late Dr. James Orr, 
to quote again from his able work on " The Chris- 
tian View of God and the World," uses these 
significant words: ''I do not believe that the 
Christian view Is obsolete; that It Is doomed to 
go down like a faded constellation In the west 
of the sky of humanity. I do not believe that 
In order to preserve It, one single truth we have 
been accustomed to see shining in that constella- 
tion, will require to be withdrawn. The world 
needs them all, and will one day acknowledge it. 
It is not with a sense of failure, therefore, but 
with a sense of triumph, that I see the progress 
of the battle between faith and unbelief. I have 
no fear that the conflict will issue in defeat. Like 
the ark above the waters, Christ's religion will 
ride in safety the waves of present-day unbelief, 
as it has ridden the waves of unbelief in days gone 
by, bearing in It the hopes of the future of hu- 
manity." 



CHAPTER II 

THE BIBLE, OUR GREAT EDUCATIONAL ASSET 

THERE never was a time when the book or 
books which we call *' The Book," was so 
much discussed as in recent years. Its origin, 
composition, authorship, authenticity, inspiration, 
authority, all these have been matters in constant 
debate. The " higher criticism," a term which 
is very misleading to those who do not understand 
its meaning, its scope, its limitations and its re- 
sults, has done not a little to disturb the confidence 
of many persons in the Word of God as an au- 
thoritative revelation of truth. This discussion 
was not unexpected. Wise leaders saw the 
gathering clouds. President Henry G. Weston 
said, some years before his death in 1909, " The 
next great battle to be fought will be over the 
divine origin and authority of the Bible." Men 
began to issue publications with such titles as this, 
*' The Gospel for an Age of Doubt." Friends 
and foes saw that the Bible was the Gibraltar of 
the Christian religion. On this issue the battle 
was joined. Dr. Weston lived to see his prophecy 
fulfilled. 

32 



THE BIBLE 33 

It should be said that the term " higher criti- 
cism " denotes a kind of criticism, and not its 
character or quality. It signifies the study of the 
origin and authenticity of the books of the Bible, 
and their relation to the facts of history as well 
as to each other. There are critics and critics, 
some destructive and others constructive. Presi- 
dent E. G. Robinson said, " I am glad for the 
existence of the ' higher criticism.' It is ap- 
pointed of God like every other method of test- 
ing the truth of Christianity, to bring that truth 
more clearly to light." Unfortunately it has not 
always had that effect. There has been, however, 
of late a strong reaction in prominent circles in 
favor of the evangelical faith. The adverse 
criticisms had gone too far to carry the consent of 
intelligent, thinking men, and numerous conjec- 
tural opinions have been compelled to be aban- 
doned by the light of fuller investigation and 
modern discovery. 

The testimony of the monuments which contain 
contemporaneous records bearing upon the Old 
Testament especially, and which though buried 
in the sand for centuries have in the providence 
of God been unearthed at a time when especially 
needed, has given its unvarying confirmation to 
the truthfulness of the Sacred Scriptures, and we 
can await confidently further developments. Says 



34 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Professor George Frederick Wright, an acknowl- 
edged authority, " That this history should be 
confirmed in so many cases and in such a remarka- 
ble manner by monuments uncovered 3000 years 
after their erection, can be nothing else than provi- 
dential. Surely, God has seen to it that the fail- 
ing faith of these later days should not be left to 
grope in darkness. When the faith of many was 
waning, and many heralds of truth were tempted 
to speak with uncertain sound, the very stones 
have cried out with a voice that only the deaf 
could fail to hear." 

Moreover, men have come to recognize more 
fully than ever before the irresistible witness of 
the Bible to its own claims, its transforming in- 
fluence upon thought and literature, upon char- 
acter and life, upon the development of the in- 
dividual, the welfare of the community and the 
progress of nations. Men have too long been 
discussing ^' mint and anise and cummin," and are 
turning now to the weightier matters of faith and 
the fundamentals of the religious life and the 
soul's salvation. Four facts need to be recog- 
nized. The Bible is still here, and in the judg- 
ment of the great body of Biblical scholars still 
stands as " an impregnable rock." Christianity is 
still here, with its authoritative sanctions, its holy 
inspirations and its lofty ideals, unweakened and 



THE BIBLE 35 

untarnished. The Church of Christ Is still here, 
with a constantly widening influence and a con- 
stantly increasing fellowship. Christ is still here, 
with his imperative challenge to the faith, the 
love and the supreme devotion of the world, de- 
claring evermore, " All power is given unto me 
in heaven and in earth," and sending out his 
gracious invitatiofij which demands a courteous 
response, " Come unto me." 

Another fact should be recognized more than 
It is wont to be, viz., the preservative influence 
of the Bible. It is the Bible that has preserved 
Christianity as a definite system of religion, with 
its holy inspirations and lofty ideals, and saved 
It from degenerating into a lifeless deism or some 
form of natural religion, which neither satisfies 
nor saves. It is the Bible that has preserved the 
Church from decay and been to it its authorita- 
tive standard of faith, and its mighty instrument 
of conquest among men, sometimes calling It back 
from gross departures to a simple spiritual faith. 
It is the Bible that has kept living and vivid the 
portrait of Jesus Christ in the world, and 
preserved it from fading into an unreal and 
powerless myth. Christ is enshrined in the Bible, 
not as a gem In a beautiful setting, but as a living, 
breathing Presence, imparting life to its sacred 
pages and sharing with its truth his own immor- 



36 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

tality. So long as Christ is Its tenant, men need 
not fear for the ark of the Lord. 

The purpose of this paper is didactic, not con- 
troversial, to indicate the important and neces- 
sary place which this Bible, of which I have been 
speaking, must hold in any complete educational 
system, to suggest its supreme value as a part of 
our educational equipment. The Bible is con- 
fessedly the most unique and conspicuous book in 
the English language or in any language. It has 
been called " The greatest English classic." Sir 
Matthew Hale, Chief Justice of England, de- 
clared, '' There is no book like the Bible for ex- 
cellent learning, wisdom and use.'' John Quincy 
Adams confessed, " The first and almost the only 
book deserving attention is the Bible." And 
Professor O. M. Mitchell, the devout Astronomer 
and patriotic General, expressed his belief that 
" The most wonderful volume in existence is, be- 
yond a doubt, the Bible." These testimonials, 
and other similar ones almost without number, 
from men eminent in every calling and profession 
in life, give to the Bible the supreme place In our 
literature, and in the mental and moral training 
of the race, a Book to be sacredly honored, to be 
devoutly studied and to be passionately loved. 
No other attainments can render a knowledge of 
this Book superfluous. It forms a necessary part 



THE BIBLE 37 

of a liberal education. No man can claim to be 
a truly educated man who has not made himself 
familiar with the contents of this Book, and 
learned the lessons which it inculcates. 

There are five methods of studying the Bible, 
viz., the historical, the biographical, the literary, 
the ethical and the religious. All are important, 
but all are not equally important. But all are 
necessary to the complete mastery of the Book. 

I. The Bible contains the history of a remarka- 
ble people, called by way of distinction " God's 
ancient people "; of the development of its moral 
and religious life, of its solitary monotheistic 
faith, of its relations to other peoples friendly 
and hostile, of its survival under conquest and 
exile, and of the strange preparation in It and 
evolution out of It, of a religion which bears the 
name of " Christianity," which has proved to be 
the mightiest force in our modern civilization, and 
Is destined to overcome all other religious faiths, 
and eventually to rule the world. Professor Ben- 
jamin W. Bacon of Yale University, speaking of 
Christianity as we know It, characterizes It In 
these words, " The religion of humanity which 
it has become, and the world-religion which It is 
destined to be." All this Is Included In the his- 
torical study of the Jewish people, which Inhabited 
a narrow strip of territory lying on the eastern 



38 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

border of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory 
which though narrow and Insignificant when com- 
pared with the great empires of the old world, 
was the thoroughfare of the nations, and whose 
history by reason of Its connection with other 
lands, as well as by reason of Its far reaching In- 
fluence, Is an Integral part of universal history. 

History Is a legitimate study and forms an 
essential part In an educational curriculum. No 
education Is complete and worthy of the name, 
which does not Include a knowledge of Greece 
and Rome, of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria, 
and even of the great empires of the farther East, 
India and Japan and China. Modern education 
lays a tremendous emphasis upon the study of the 
classic languages of Greece and Rome, and the 
history of the peoples who spoke them. Should 
It not give an equal place to the study of the his- 
tory of Israel and the land of Syria, which have 
had a mightier Influence at least upon the life and 
civilization of the West than Greece and Rome 
combined? It Is said, as If by way of explana- 
tion, that the Greeks had a genius for art, the 
Romans for law and government, and the Jews 
for religion. That Is probably an explanation 
which does not wholly explain. But religion Is 
as much a matter of history as art and government, 
and Its study Is certainly as broadening and Uluml- 



THE BIBLE 39 

nating, and as helpful to life and character, 
whether personal or national. Art found per- 
manent expression in architecture and the beauty 
of sculptured form. Law found permanent ex- 
pression in the Roman Pandects, a digest of the 
decisions and opinions of the Roman jurists made 
in the sixth century by order of the Emperor Jus- 
tinian. And religion found permanent expression 
in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which have 
molded the thinking and conduct of men and 
the life of nations until now, and never more 
powerfully than at the present time. All this is 
history. To study the Bible historically is to be- 
come familiar not only with the external events 
of the Hebrew nation, marvelous as some of them 
were, but with its spirit, its genius and its faith, 
and with the beginnings of the religion founded 
by Him of whom Jean Paul Friedrich Richter 
says, " He is the purest among the mighty, the 
mightiest among the pure, who with his pierced 
hand has raised empires from their foundations, 
turned the stream of history from its old channel, 
and still continues to rule and guide the ages.*' 
Inevitably the study of this ancient history will find 
much about it that will justify the term " sacred," 
which is uniformly applied to it, much that will 
be unmistakable evidence of the presence and pur- 
pose, interposition and guidance of the supreme 



40 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Ruler of the universe. Dr. William S. Rainsford 
has well said, *' We owe much to the beauty- 
loving Greeks, we owe much to the law-making 
Romans; but more, far more do we owe to the 
God-loving Jews." 

The following paragraph is taken from " The 
American Mind " by that eminent litterateur. 
Professor Bliss Perry, who discloses a just insight 
into the forces, subtle and complex, which have 
produced our Western civilization. ^' For that 
matter, what was, and is, that one Book — to the 
eyes of the Protestant seventeenth century infalli- 
ble and inexpressibly sacred — but the most potent 
and universal commerce of ideas and spirit, pass- 
ing from the Orient through Greek and Roman 
civilization, into the rr^ind and heart of western 
Europe and America? 

*0h, East is East, and West is West, 
And ne'er the twain shall meet/ 

declares a confident poet of to-day. But East 
and West met long ago in the matchless phrases 
translated from Hebrew and Greek and Latin 
into the English Bible; and the heart of the East 
there answers to the heart of the West, as in 
water face answereth to face. That the coloniz- 
ing Englishmen of the seventeenth century were 
Hebrews in spiritual culture, and heirs of Greece 



THE BIBLE 41 

and Rome without ceasing to be Anglo-Saxon in 
blood, is one of the marvels of the history of 
civilization, and it is one of the basal facts in the 
intellectual life of the United States to-day." 

2c The second method of studying the Bible 
is the biographical. This is nearly related to the 
historical, for biography is largely history per- 
sonified. Human history is the story of human 
lives, singly or in groups. Great movements in 
the annals of the world are connected with the 
men who are denominated great leaders, kings, 
generals, statesmen, reformers and philanthro- 
pists, and are revelations of their genius, their 
character, their ambitions, their aspirations, their 
ability, their convictions and their personal traits. 
To know history is to know men, their activity, 
their influence, their successes or failures, their 
victories or defeats. Educators to-day are em- 
phasizing the value of the study of biography 
as one of the most attractive, inspiring, character- 
building branches of learning. Our libraries are 
being filled with the lives of those who have been 
really or supposedly great among their fellows, 
and worthy of permanent record, who have made 
conspicuous attainments, illustrated great princi- 
ples and served noble causes. Even fiction ac- 
quires its principal charm, not from its literary 
style, but from the Imaginary characters which it 



42 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

portrays, and the living incidents which make up 
its chapters. It is a real world into which the 
Bible introduces us, with inhabitants like ourselves, 
intensely human, bone of our bone and flesh of our 
flesh, living our lives, sharing our experiences of 
temptation and trial, of joy and sorrow, and 
looking forward to the same destiny. It is not 
a world of myths and unrealities. It is no fic- 
tion. Reality impresses us everywhere. As an- 
other has said, " There is no other book which 
reflects so many sides and aspects of human ex- 
perience as the Bible, and this fact alone would 
suffice to give it a worldwide interest and make it 
popular. Born in the East and clothed in 
Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the 
ways of all the world with familiar feet, and en- 
ters land after land to find its own everywhere." 
It is humanity's book and makes its appeal to every 
age and nation. 

The Bible is throbbing with human life. It is 
not simply a book of philosophy however sublime, 
nor of unillustrated moral and religious truth. It 
is crowded with the names and deeds of men and 
women who were prominent in their time, and 
will be prominent in all time; it is alive with char- 
acters which are worthy of devout study and of 
perpetual imitation. This fact constitutes its re- 
sistless attraction and no small part of its perma- 



THE BIBLE 43 

nent value. The world cannot afford to forget 
Enoch, the man who knew how to " walk with 
God and was not, for God took him," or Abra- 
ham the man of sublime faith and the founder of 
a great nation, " who looked with clear vision for 
a city which hath foundations whose builder and 
maker Is God," or Moses, the father of history 
and matchless leader of his people, " who chose 
rather to suffer affliction with the people of God 
than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season," 
or Joseph, the heroic and Incorruptible official, 
or David, the royal singer, whose Psalms, born 
out of his own experience, will express the deepest 
experiences of the humble, the devout, the true, 
the God-fearing In all the ages, or Elijah, the 
prophet of fire and defender of the one true God, 
or Isaiah, the magnificent preacher of righteous- 
ness and sweet voiced prophet of the coming Mes- 
siah and the glory of his kingdom, or any of the 
other prophets and servants of God who stood for 
justice and humanity, and whose messages are find- 
ing fresh application to-day for the rectification 
of the oppressions and wrongs of our social con- 
ditions, heroes and martyrs, a great company, 
some of whose names are written In the eleventh 
chapter of Hebrews, the Westminster Abbey of 
the ancient Church, men '* who through faith sub- 
dued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained 



44 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

promises, stopped the mouths of lions, . . . were 
stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, slain with the 
sword, . . . being destitute, afflicted, tormented, 
not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain 
a better resurrection, of whom the world was not 
worthy." Surely, to live in such company and 
look upon such lives is to live in the heroic age 
of the world, and be lifted up out of the narrow- 
ness and littleness of the ordinary, selfish, hum- 
drum existence. 

No more can the world afford to forget Peter, 
the impulsive, fickle, steadfast, lion-hearted apostle 
and martyr, or Paul, the persecutor, then the 
pioneer missionary and founder of churches and 
mighty teacher, who laid his frail body and 
vigorous intellect without reserve upon the altar 
of his new found faith, or John, who once a son 
of thunder, became the devout mystic and the 
apostle of love, and was admitted into the inner 
chamber of his Master's person and spirit, or 
Stephen, the proto-martyr under the Christian dis- 
pensation, who when the cruel stones were crush- 
ing the life out of him, had a vision of his ascended 
Lord, to whom he committed his departing spirit, 
and the angels had a vision of the Christ-spirit 
dwelling in him, as he prayed for his murderers, 
that their sin might not be laid to their charge, 
and indeed there was a threefold vision, for his 



THE BIBLE 45 

murderers looked upon his shining face as it had 
been the face of an angel. And who can afford 
to forget the Master himself, who, regarded as 
a merely human being, a man among men, stood 
upon the very pinnacle of moral excellence, pos- 
sessing in Himself all beauty, symmetry, harmony, 
completeness and perfection of life, the one abso- 
lute illustration of genuine manhood for all the 
ages to the end of time, whose life Carlyle calls 
" a perfect ideal poem '^ and whose person " the 
greatest of all heroes " ; with whom Rousseau 
says " Socrates was not to be compared," whom 
Goethe calls " the divine man," *' the pattern and 
model of humanity," and of whom Renan speaks 
as *' the incomparable man," and adds '' what- 
ever may be the surprises of the future Jesus will 
never be surpassed. His worship will grow 
young without ceasing, his legend will call forth 
tears without end, his sufferings will melt the 
noblest hearts, and all ages will proclaim, that 
among the sons of men, there is none born greater 
than Jesus." When we find unbelievers employ- 
ing such unqualified language In describing the 
character of the man, Christ Jesus, we need not 
be surprised to hear Dr. Philip Schaff, a devout 
and learned disciple, speaking of Him as " over- 
flowing with the purest love to men, free from 
every sin and error, Innocent and holy, teaching 



46 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

and practicing all virtues in perfect harmony, de- 
voted solely and uniformly to the noblest ends, 
sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, 
and ever acknowledged since as the one and only 
perfect Model of goodness and holiness." It is 
well to remember that all evolution in character 
is evolution backward, towards the one flawless 
Example and Model for all mankind. 

Is biography worth while in a system of educa- 
tion ? Is it true that 

''Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime " ? 

Is familiarity with noble examples of men who 
have been consecrated to truth and righteousness, 
to God and humanity, inspiring and helpful to 
right living? Does it have an important place 
in mental training and moral discipline? Can it 
be placed side by side, as an educational influence 
and aid to character and culture, with an acquaint- 
ance with many languages, living and dead, and 
the reasonings of human philosophy, and the facts 
of natural science? Does fellowship with those 
who have '* dealt justly, and loved mercy, and 
walked humbly before God," who have illustrated 
the higher manhood and served their generation 
acceptably, stimulate and broaden, strengthen and 
uplift, in a word, educate and lead out the mind 



THE BIBLE 47 

to larger possibilities and loftier endeavors? 
Then, where can be found nobler and more in- 
spiring biographies, examples more worthy of 
imitation, lives whose fellowship would be more 
valuable than those recorded in the pages of the 
Bible? The saintly Dr. Edward Payson, of 
blessed memory, spoke of the companionships in 
the Bible in this manner: "By opening this 
volume we may at any time walk in the garden of 
Eden with Adam, sit in the ark with Noah, share 
the hospitality or witness the faith of Abraham, 
ascend the mount of God with Moses, unite in 
the secret devotions of David, or listen to the 
eloquent and impassioned address of Paul. Nay, 
more ; we may here converse with Him who spake 
as never man spake, participate with the just made 
perfect in the employment and happiness of 
Heaven, and enjoy sweet communion with the 
Father of our spirits through his Son Jesus Christ. 
Such is the society to which the Scriptures intro- 
duce us, such the examples which they present for 
our imitation." 

The following apt quotation is taken from " Re- 
ligion as Life " by President Henry Churchill 
King. " Just because the method of life includes, 
as everywhere requisite, fellowship, men are 
driven to find the great sources of life, short of 
God himself, in the most rewarding personalities 



48 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

of the moral and religious sphere, and so to give 
special place to the great line of prophetic seers 
of the spiritual, culminating in Jesus." 

3. A third method of studying the Bible is the 
literary method. The Bible, it has been affirmed 
without contradiction, " holds a place of pre- 
eminence in the republic of letters." It is not 
only " part and parcel of the human story," but 
it is part and parcel of the world's literature. 
Not only in elevation and sublimity of thought, 
but in simplicity and beauty, dignity and charm 
of expression, it is not only unsurpassed, but is 
without a parallel among the myriads of volumes 
that crowd each other on library shelves, and more 
than they all together, our English version has in- 
fluenced the thinking and literary style of the au- 
thors of books that have won recognition and any 
degree of permanence during the three hundred 
years since its production. John Richard Green, 
the historian, declares, *' As a mere literary monu- 
ment, the English of the Bible remains the noblest 
example of the English tongue, while its perpetual 
use made it from the instant of its appearance the 
standard of our language." Macaulay, in his 
" Essay on Dryden," characterizes the English Bi- 
ble as " a book which, if everything else in our 
language should perish, would alone suffice to 
show the extent of its beauty and power." Pro- 



THE BIBLE 49 

fessor George P. Marsh, an unquestioned au- 
thority, expresses his conviction that " Tyndale's 
translation of the New Testament has exerted a 
more marked influence upon English philology 
than any other native work between the ages of 
Chaucer and Shakespeare." Indeed, he goes so 
far as to affirm that " the English Bible has made 
the English language." It would not be difficult 
to fill a good sized volume with similar testimonies 
as to the dominant character and molding influ- 
ence of our Scriptures upon the literature and lan- 
guage of English-speaking peoples. 

A short time ago the New York " Nation " 
quoted from a European journal as follows: 
" The philosophies, the literatures, the arts and 
the languages themselves of Western civilization 
have been nourished in large part by the Bible. 
The Biblical tradition impregnates all of our 
fashions of thinking and speaking. A man totally 
unacquainted with sacred history would go through 
the world as if deaf and blind. A people that 
loses familiarity with the Bible is exiled from its 
spiritual and intellectual fatherhood, and becomes 
a band of outlaws." 

It will be remembered that Tyndale^s version 
of the Bible (about 1534) which flowered into the 
version of 161 1, the most splendid piece of Eng- 
lish of all the versions, was based upon previous 



50 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

translations, going back to Wycliffe's (about 
1384). It will also be remembered that the cen- 
tury in which the King James version was com- 
pleted and published, lying between 1550 and 
1650, " gave birth to more men," to quote from 
Professor T. Harwood Pattison, " who were 
destined to great literary distinction than has any 
other period of equal length in English history." 
It is only necessary to recall the names of Raleigh 
and Spenser and Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor and 
Robert South, of Izaak Walton and Lord Bacon 
and George Herbert, of Leighton and Owen and 
Baxter, and above all of Shakespeare and Milton 
and Bunyan. Among these brilliant luminaries 
of that brilliant century the Bible shines as the 
bright, particular planet. As a literary orb Cow- 
per's language is true of it, 

" A glory gilds the sacred page, 

Majestic like the sun, 
It gives a light to every age, 

It gives, but borrows none." 

Indeed, it may be said that the chief element 
that gives elevation and attractiveness and perma- 
nence to contemporaneous literature, as well as 
subsequent, is the infusion of the thought, kinship 
with the style and allusions to the incidents and 
imagery of the Bible. Shakespeare is sometimes 
said to be " saturated " with the Bible, so fre- 



THE BIBLE 51 

quent are its references to the characters and 
phraseology of Scripture, while Milton and Bun- 
yan often seem little more than paraphrases. 

It would be easy to cite the names of men who 
have been distinguished in the fields of history 
and science, statesmanship and literature, who 
have borne glad testimony to their reverence for 
the Bible and its creative and formative influence 
upon their thought and literary style, or whose 
writings have plainly revealed the master-spirit at 
whose feet they have patiently and admiringly 
sat, and whose lessons they have not failed to im- 
bibe, for it is evermore true that a man's speech 
often betrayeth him. In addition to Macaulay 
and Green in the realm of history, already men- 
tioned, we think of Froude and Milman and Free- 
man, of Bancroft and Motley and Prescott and of 
Washington Irving, who confessed, " I think I 
have waked a good many sleeping fancies by the 
reading of a chapter in Isaiah." In the realm of 
science, we think of Sir Isaac Newton and David 
Brewster, of Sir Humphry Davy and Faraday, 
who expounded the Bible every Sunday in the 
meeting of an obscure religious sect, and of our 
own Agassiz and Gray and Dana, who were dili- 
gent students of the Bible, and even of Professor 
Huxley, who could not withhold his testimony to 
the educational value of the Bible, for he said: 



52 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

'' For three centuries this book has been woven into 
the life of all that is best and noblest in English 
history; it has become the national epic of Britain, 
and is as familiar to noble and simple, from John 
O'Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and 
Tasso once were to the Italians." In the realm 
of statesmanship we think of Cromwell and 
Shaftesbury, of Bright and Gladstone, whom their 
familiarity with the Bible qualified for their high 
service, and of Washington, who associated " the 
pure and benign light of Revelation " with " re- 
finement of manners and growing liberality of 
sentiment," and Webster, who ascribed the dig- 
nity and stateliness of his speech to his intimate 
acquaintance with the Old Testament prophets, 
and Lincoln, who had almost no other text book 
than the Bible, and whose classic and immortal 
utterances glow with its beauty and spirit. In 
the realm of prose literature we think of Wal- 
ter Scott, who called for " the Book " in his 
last hour, saying " there was only one Book," 
of Dickens and Thackeray, in whose writings 
hundreds of Biblical allusions are found, of 
Ruskin, who paid an affectionate tribute to his 
Bible and to his mother, who with gentle authority 
early Introduced him to its purity of thought and 
of language, of Matthew Arnold and Walter 
Pater and A. C. Benson, of Hawthorne and 



THE BIBLE 53 

Emerson, to speak of no others In the long list 
of prose writers on both sides of the Atlantic. 
And In the realm of modern poetry we think 
of Cowper and Wordsworth, of Tennyson and 
Browning and Edwin Arnold, of Longfellow 
and Whittler and Lowell and Bryant, all of whom 
drank deep at this pure Pierian spring, and have 
Imparted their Inspiration to their own genera- 
tion, and will Impart It to the generations that 
follow. 

A few personal testimonies of superior weight 
will emphasize the literary value of the Bible as 
an educational asset. Mr. Charles A. Dana, 
the successful American journalist, In an address 
at Union College to students who might be con- 
templating entering upon that profession, said: 
" There are some books that are absolutely in- 
dispensable, . . . and of all these the most in- 
dispensable, the most useful, the one whose knowl- 
edge is most effective, is the Bible. There Is no 
book from which more valuable lessons can be 
learned. I am considering It now not as a re- 
ligious book, but as a manual of utility, of pro- 
fessional preparation and professional use for a 
journalist. There is perhaps no book whose style 
is more suggestive and more instructive, from 
which you learn more directly that sublime sim- 
plicity which never exaggerates, which recounts 



54 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

the greatest event with solemnity of course, but 
without sentimentality or affectation; none which 
you open with such confidence and lay down with 
such reverence; there is no book like the Bible." 
Froude, the historian, speaking of the translation 
of Tyndale, says, *' The peculiar genius which 
breathes through it, the mingled tenderness and 
majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural 
grandeur, unequaled, unapproached in the at- 
tempted improvements of modern scholars, are 
all here, and bear the impress of one man, and 
that man William Tyndale." Sir Edwin Arnold, 
of international reputation in the field of letters, 
frankly acknowledges in answer to the query, 
*' What I owe to the Bible? " '' My short reply 
would be ' everything.' My long reply, to be 
sufficiently serious and comprehensive, would run 
into reams of paper. But if, as I suppose, I am 
addressed as a man of letters, I will simply say 
that I owe my education as a writer more to the 
Bible than to any other hundred books that could 
be named. It is the grandest possible school of 
style, letting alone all that it must ever be on the 
moral and spiritual side. I had read the Bible 
through and through three times over before I 
was twelve years of age." 

Professor Hoare, of Balliol College, is quoted 
as follows, '' The Bible is accepted as a literary 



THE BIBLE 55 

masterpiece, as the noblest and most beautiful 
book in the world, which has exercised an incal- 
culable influence upon religion, upon manners, 
upon literature and upon character." Professor 
Simon Greenleaf, once Professor in Harvard 
University, has expressed his deliberate verdict 
in these words, " In sublimity of thought, in 
grandeur of conception, in purity and elevation 
of moral principle, in the practical wisdom of its 
teachings, and the universality and perpetuity of 
their application, and above all, in the high and 
important character of its themes, the Holy Bible 
is not even approached by any human composi- 
tion." Theodore Parker left behind him this 
honest judgment, " View it in what light we may, 
the Bible is a very surprising phenomenon. It 
is read of a Sabbath in all the ten thousand pul- 
pits of our land. In all the temples of Christen- 
dom is its voice lifted up, week by week. The 
sun never sets on its gleaming page. It goes 
equally to the cottage of the plain man, and the 
palace of the king. It is woven into the litera- 
ture of the scholar, and colors the talk of the 
street. ... It blesses us when we are born, gives 
names to half of Christendom, rejoices with us, 
has sympathy for our mourning, and tempers our 
grief to finer issues. It is the better part of our 
sermons. It lifts man above himself; our best 



S6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

of uttered prayers are In Its storied speech, where- 
with our fathers and the patriarchs prayed.'' Dr. 
Andrew P. Peabody, formerly a Professor In Har- 
vard University, declared, " Our Bible Is still the 
key to the best English diction, and by conversance 
with It our children are made familiar with their 
own language In a purer form than any other 
which can be placed before them." And John 
Stuart Mill adds his testimony In these words, 
" The Bible and Shakespeare have done more 
than any other books for the English language, In- 
troducing Into the soul of It such grand Ideas ex- 
pressed with such sublime simplicity." 

Such consenting and unanimous testimony from 
the great world of letters, from which there Is no 
discordant note, gives to the English Bible not 
only an exalted place, but the supreme place In 
Its Influence upon the literary product of English- 
speaking people. In it we have narrative and 
parable, poetry and song, oratory and drama, de- 
nunciation and promise, moral precept, theological 
statement and glowing prophecy, all expressed 
with a simplicity and lucidity, beauty and charm, 
dignity and sublimity, force and Impressiveness, 
unsurpassed, not to say unequaled. If familiarity 
with literature is a necessary part of a liberal 
education, and If the highest literature will In- 
evitably tend to cultivate the noblest think- 



THE BIBLE 57 

ing, as well as furnish the best training in 
the use of words and forms of expression, 
the student who is ambitious to achieve ex- 
cellence for himself, and even to read intelli- 
gently the classics in his ow,n tongue, must give 
himself diligently and conscientiously to that Book 
which, as a living American educator has recently 
said, 'Vhas had an immeasurable effect upon the 
whole body of English literature, and has shaped 
not only the thought of the greatest writers and 
orators, but also their phraseology and style, who 
expect their readers to know the meanings of 
the scriptural allusions with which their works 
abound." 

It is to be feared that our educational system, 
from the lowest grade to the highest, is culpably 
neglecting a chief source of culture, and that the 
neglect of home training and the changed method 
of Sunday School instruction, which requires little 
of the language of the Bible to be committed to 
memory, are giving to us a generation, whose cul- 
ture is greatly inferior to that of the fathers, and 
which is disqualified from appreciating the riches 
of our literary inheritance. The results of tests 
which Professors in colleges have submitted to 
their students in order to ascertain their ability to 
understand Scriptural allusions in our standard 



58 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

literature, would be amusing, if they were not so 
painful and deplorable. 

4. The fourth method of studying the Bible, 
and a method vastly more important than those 
which have been considered, is the ethical method. 
More valuable than the informing and training of 
the mind and the cultivation of the literary taste 
and style, is the inculcation of moral principle and 
the development of personal character. It can 
be safely said that no book in our language or in 
any language can be compared with the Bible as 
a moral dynamic. For its exalted moral teach- 
ings, for its principles which should control con- 
duct and life, for its inspired guidance for man 
in all his relations, the Bible furnishes the abso- 
lutely perfect rule. All ethical systems have 
value as they are conformed to this standard. 
President Francis Wayland, who acquired a na- 
tional reputation, not only as a college adminis- 
trator but as a teacher of Moral Science, gave ut- 
terance to his high appreciation of the moral in- 
fluence of the Scriptures in these positive words, 
'' That the truths of the Bible have the power of 
awakening an intense moral feeling in man under 
every variety of character, learned or ignorant, 
civilized or savage; that they make bad men good, 
and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all 
the domestic, civil and social relations; that they 



THE BIBLE 59 

teach men to love right and hate wrong, and to 
seek each other's welfare, as the children of one 
common Parent; that they control the baleful pas- 
sions of the human heart, and thus make men 
proficient In the science of self-government; and 
finally, that they teach men to aspire after a con- 
formity to a Being of infinite holiness, and fill 
them with hopes infinitely more purifying, more 
exalted, more suited to their nature, than any other 
which this world has ever known, are facts as in- 
controvertible as the laws of philosophy or the 
demonstrations of mathematics." And Thomas 
Jefferson frankly declared, " Of all the systems of 
morality, ancient or modern, which have come 
under my observation, none appear to me so pure 
as that of Jesus." Again he said, " I have always 
said, and always will say, that the studious 
perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better 
citizens, better fathers and better husbands." 

All ethnic religions have had their moral teach- 
ings. It has been said that it is not difficult to 
find single threads in these religions which faintly 
suggest the cloth of gold found in the ethical 
precepts of the Gospels. The teachings of Con- 
fucius, for example, contain what Is sometimes 
spoken of as " the golden rule," which reads, 
" Do not do unto others what you would not have 
them do to you," a mere negative prohibition. 



6o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

which would produce a race of ciphers, and would 
justify a man in finding his chief cause for grati- 
tude to God, in that he had done no harm in the 
world, but is in striking contrast with the positive 
injunction of Christianity, which would fill life 
with a benevolent helpfulness and an abounding 
service. Meroz was cursed because it came not 
to the help of the Lord. There were seven thou- 
sand men in Israel, who had not bowed the knee 
to Baal, but their virtue was a negative quantity. 
They did nothing to make themselves publicly 
known as on the Lord's side, or to comfort and 
support his prophet. It is impossible to construct 
a useful life and a worthy and acceptable char- 
acter out of mere negatives. The doom of the 
final judgment, as foretold by Christ, was pro- 
nounced upon those who " did it not," while eter- 
nal blessedness is to be the reward of the actively 
obedient and sympathetically helpful to God's 
needy ones. But the so-called moralities of other 
religions are worse than negative; they are crude 
and often offensive in comparison with the pure 
and lofty teachings of the Bible. A comparison 
between the moral teachings of the Bible and the 
philosophic ethics of Greece and Rome has been 
frequently made, and discloses but slight resem- 
blances, and at the same time enormous contrasts. 
Romanes pronounces the latter often " absurd " 



THE BIBLE 6i 

in the judgment of reason and '' shocking to the 
moral sense." 

It is true that there is progress in the Scrip- 
tures in their ethical teachings, as well as in their 
doctrinal teachings. There is a basis of truth for 
the statement of Dr. Newman Smyth, though it 
is put so strongly that by many persons it is cer- 
tain to be misunderstood, and leave an utterly er- 
roneous impression. He says, " The morality of 
the Old Testament was incomplete, in many re- 
spects defective, and neither in its outward sanc- 
tions nor its inward motives a final morality for 
man; yet it was real morality, striving towards 
better things, growing from a genuine ethical root 
into the light and fruitfulness of the coming sea- 
son of divine grace. The method of the morality 
of the Old Testament is educational and progres- 
sive ; its whole character is preparatory and proph- 
etic." Such language inevitably leads to a false 
underestimate of the character of the moral teach- 
ings of God's ancient Scriptures. Whatever may 
have been their incompleteness, they had upon 
them the stamp of the divine approval and author- 
ship, and were fully sufficient to lead men to obedi- 
ence and fellowship with God, and to a godly 
life. The legislation of Moses in the matter of 
divorce, referred to in the Gospels, was not, as is 
sometimes supposed, in favor of a loosening of 



62 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

the marriage bond, and an instance of immoral 
legislation, but it was for the purpose of tighten- 
ing and protecting the marriage bond, and making 
divorce more difficult, while at the same time the 
original primal relationship, which made of twain 
one flesh, not to be put asunder, was reasserted in 
all its sanctity. No intelligent reader of the Old 
Testament can dispute the fact that the whole 
tendency and drift of its teachings were positively 
and only ethical. They produced saints, not only 
in name but in reality, saints who feared God and 
loved his commandments, who hated iniquity, who 
" wrought righteousness and obtained promises." 
An eminent American preacher, when called 
to preach before a University audience, chose for 
his text the words of the prophet Micah, " What 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and 
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God," 
and he found in them the whole duty of man, his 
duty towards God and his duty towards his fel- 
low man. They contained in his judgment a 
complete moral code, with no incompleteness and 
no defectiveness. Men were exhorted in the 
ante-Christian era to " mark the perfect man and 
behold the upright, for the end of that man is 
peace," implying that the moral light of that olden 
time was sufficient to produce upright and godly 
examples worthy of study and imitation. Again 



THE BIBLE 63 

It was said, " Thou desirest truth in the inward 
parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me 
to know wisdom," and again, " Who shall ascend 
into the hill of the Lord, who shall stand in his 
holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure 
heart." Inward purity and outward obedience, 
inward motives that were holy and outward sanc- 
tions approved of God, were alike demanded in 
the accepted worshiper. How often were men 
told by God's servants that He desired not sacri- 
fice, and was not pleased even with thousands of 
rams, with the empty, even excessive observance of 
an outward ritual, but with a broken spirit and a 
contrite heart. These were God's delight. Who, 
even in our day, has a deeper insight into the true 
nature of sin, and the nature of spiritual worship, 
than that Old Testament saint who under the deep 
consciousness of his guilt, cried out, " Against 
Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil 
in thy sight," and looked above his sin as a mere 
violation of human moral law, and saw in it a blow 
aimed at the moral government of the universe, 
and at the known will of Him who sits upon its 
throne? Such a conception of the guilt and na- 
ture of sin is not too frequent even in this morally 
enlightened age. A moral system that had em- 
blazoned upon its central page and clothed with 
divine authority and supernatural sanctity, the ten 



64 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

great comma;ndments, including reverence for the 
one personal God, the prohibition of all substi- 
tutes in his place, of whatever kind, the One, 
whose unquestioned prerogative it is to dispense 
justice to all who hate Him, and mercy to those 
who love Him ; whose name is to be sacredly hon- 
ored and adored; a holy regard for his Sabbath; 
the sanctity of parental authority and the family 
life; a conscientious respect for the life, the rights, 
the property, the good name of all men, not only 
the forbidding of graft, oppression, unchastity, 
untruthfulness, robbery, but even of the inward 
coveting of whatever is not one's own, must have 
had in it elements of permanence and universal 
application. When men boast that they have 
outgrown the Old Testament teachings and are 
living in a new and enlightened period of the 
world's history, it may be replied confidently that 
there is abundant evidence all about us that the 
world has not yet lived up to the moral standard 
proclaimed by the prophets and teachers of the 
Jewish nation. 

It should be added that those teachings were 
preeminently social in their application, and had 
to do with the community life and the national 
life and conditions as well as with the life of the 
individual. Modern conditions are directing the 
attention of preachers anew to the fearless utter- 



THE BIBLE 65 

ances of their God-called and God-inspired pred- 
ecessors, which are as applicable and necessary 
at the present time as they were in the days of 
old, indeed which seem as if they were spoken 
especially for our day, when conditions are strik- 
ingly analogous. No message is more modern 
than this one of ancient times, that the prosperity 
of the nation is dependent upon the righteousness 
of the nation. " Righteousness exalteth a nation, 
but sin is a reproach to any people." No prog- 
ress has been made beyond the old condition of a 
nation's glory, when " Mercy and truth are met 
together, and righteousness and peace have kissed 
each other." It is as true of the Old Testament 
in the twentieth century as it was in the first cen- 
tury that " Every Scripture inspired of God is 
also profitable for teaching, for correction, for 
reproof, for instruction which is in righteousness, 
that the man of God may be complete, furnished 
completely unto every good work." 

The striking language of Matthew Arnold, in 
" Literature and Dogma," cannot be forgotten 
or disputed, — " As long as the world lasts all 
who want to make progress in righteousness will 
come to Israel for inspiration as to the people 
who have had the sense of righteousness most 
glowing and strongest, and in hearing and reading 
the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for 



66 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

conduct will find a glow and a force they could 
find nowhere else. As well imagine a man with 
a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the help 
of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a 
sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of 
Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense 
for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the 
Bible. . . . Greece was the lifter up to the 
nations of the banner of art and science, as Israel 
was the lifter up of the banner of righteousness." 
This discussion of the character of the moral 
teachings of the Old Testament does not imply 
that Christ has not given to morality a fuller, 
deeper and more spiritual meaning. He de- 
nounced the formalism, the shallowness, the In- 
sincerity of his time. He demolished the accre- 
tions and misinterpretations, which in the degen- 
erate years had attached themselves to the rules 
of conduct and of life. But He came not to de- 
stroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill, not only 
to fulfill the Old Testament types and Messianic 
predictions pertaining to Himself, but to fill out 
In distinct and visible outline, by his teaching and 
his example, the moral and spiritual command- 
ments which his generation had received from 
the fathers. The Old Testament does not stand 
alone. It finds Its illumination and Illustration 
In the New. As has been said, "the New Is 



THE BIBLE 67 

concealed in the Old, and the Old Is revealed in 
the New." There is no contradiction, but a ful- 
fillment, a rounding out, a completion, a new and 
deeper spiritual emphasis. Christ laid special 
emphasis not upon the act, but upon the spirit, 
which lies behind the act, and may never find 
expression in outward conduct. Hatred Is mur- 
der, and lust Is adultery. Morality is too often 
regarded as a mere matter of conduct. The 
moral man, it is thought, is the man who abstains 
from wrongdoing, who is guilty of no violation 
of legal enactment or moral precept. That Is as 
far as the judgment of men can go with its narrow 
vision. But Christ teaches that there is immo- 
rality of the soul, which lies beneath the gaze of 
man's eyes, which only the eye of God can see. 
This is the true standard of judgment and of life. 
Ordinary morality may make better citizens in 
the Republic, but it does not go deep enough to 
qualify for citizenship In the kingdom of God. 

The moral code of Christ may be said to be 
contained In the Sermon on the Mount, which 
men who little comprehend its searching, pene- 
trating, revealing character, sometimes say " is 
good enough Gospel for me," thinking thereby 
to declare their Independence of the Gospel, which 
contains a sacrificial death and the offer of par- 
doning grace. If the Sermon on the Mount Is 



68 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

the only Gospel which the world possesses, there 
is no hope for it, for it is, in very truth, a new 
and resplendent law of life, which while it reveals 
Christ's perfect standard, reveals at the same 
time the utter insufficiency of man's conformity and 
obedience. It is a new schoolmaster to lead every 
thoughtful man to the cross of Christ, and trust 
in his perfect obedience and offer of eternal life. 
It makes a demand for virtues which are not wont 
to be comprised in the world's category, and pro- 
claims the universal law of perfect, required man- 
hood, and at the same time discloses '^ the touch- 
stone of every social and political order." Pov- 
erty of spirit, meaning a humble consciousness of 
spiritual need, penitence and meekness of soul, 
hunger and thirst after righteousness or justice, 
which means a passion for the doing of God's 
will in heart and life, mercifulness like the divine, 
including compassion as well as forgiveness, in- 
ward purity which allies a man to God, and con- 
tains the assurance of eternal fellowship with Him, 
the ability to live at peace with all men, and to 
persuade all men to live at peace with one an- 
other, avoiding all oppression and wrong, and so 
to be the sons of God, and help to realize the ful- 
fillment of the angelic prophecy, when the only 
begotten Son of God was born into the world, and 
joy in the midst of persecution bravely endured 



THE BIBLE 69 

for righteousness' sake, — these, these are the re- 
quired credentials of the subjects of Christ's king- 
dom, these are the beatitudes of those who would 
be his followers, these are the characteristics of 
those who would live according to the standard 
of his moral teachings. And then He goes on 
to enjoin upon his hearers to be " perfect as God 
is perfect," and closes his sermon with the one 
just criterion of all life, '' by their fruits they 
should be known." It is no wonder that the peo- 
ple were astonished at his teaching, and wondered 
as He ceased and came down from the mount. 

John Stuart Mill boldly affirmed: " Not even 
now could it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to 
find a better translation of the rule of virtue from 
the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor 
so to live that Christ would approve of our life." 

This, then, briefly was Christ's ethical standard 
of life and character, the like of which the world 
had never seen, and of which the moralists and 
philosophers among men had never even dreamed. 
And yet Christ left to the world not a code of 
morals simply, but a life. He illustrated his pure 
and sublime moral teaching by his perfect ex- 
ample. He lived what He taught, and taught 
by his life, and to his example all human life is 
to be conformed. All students who aspire to 
know that which is highest and best in character 



70 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

and life, and to realize it in themselves and in the 
world, must sit at the feet of " the Lord and Mas- 
ter of us all," and as they catch his spirit, and 
imitate his example, and walk in his footsteps, 
civilization is to be advanced, social evils are to 
be eradicated, social conditions are to be* made 
perfect, righteousness and peace are to kiss each 
other, and the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven 
is to be brought in. Well has John Morley 
spoken of ^' the volcanic elements that slumber in 
the Sermon on the Mount." 

Rev. J. Bradford Thomson, in his volume en- 
titled " Central Evidences of Christianity," de- 
clares, "But the fact is that the ethics of Chris- 
tianity did not come from man but to man, that 
the Lord Jesus professed a divine authority for 
his revelations, and that, after all, what gives 
Christian morality its true power is its actual em- 
bodiment in Christ Himself, and the special mo- 
tive to aspiration and obedience which He fur- 
nished in his voluntary devotion to the cross for 
the salvation of mankind." Again he says, " The 
New Testament is a trumpet-call, summoning all 
who acknowledge its authority to aspiration, 
progress and eminence in goodness." A poet has 
finely expressed the magnetic power of the teach- 
ing and life of Christ in these lines: 



THE BIBLE 71 

" Thou art the great completion of my soul, 

The blest fulfillment of its deepest need ; 
When self-surrendered to thy dear control, 
It enters into liberty indeed. 
Thy love, a genial law, 
Its very aim doth dravy 
Within its holy range, and sweetly lure 
Its longing toward the beautiful and pure." 

Ethical Christianity, it will be noticed, stands in 
striking contrast also with all other moral sys- 
tems in that it furnishes an adequate dynamic for 
its own realization. 

In '^ Supernatural Religion,*' a book which was 
intended to be a fatal assault on the Christian 
faith, it was nevertheless confessed, " The teach- 
ing of Jesus carried morality to the sublimest point 
attained or attainable by humanity. The influ- 
ence of his spiritual religion has been rendered 
doubly great by the unparalleled purity and eleva- 
tion of his own character." Mr. Lecky, though 
an enemy of evangelical Christianity, has declared, 
" It was reserved for Christianity to present to 
the world an ideal character which through all 
the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the 
hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has 
shown itself capable of acting in all ages, nations, 
temperaments and conditions; has not only been 
the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest in- 
centive to Its practice ; and has exerted so deep an 



72 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

influence that it may be truly said that the simple 
record of three short years of active life has done 
more to regenerate and to soften mankind than 
all the disquisitions of philosophers, and all the 
exhortations of moralists." And Mr. J. Brierley, 
an English author, whose interpretation of the 
facts and truths of the Christian religion fre- 
quently calls for a sharp dissent, nevertheless says 
in " Religion and Experience: " " As against all 
that had gone before, or was outside, we have 
here [in Christianity] a religion that was, for 
one thing, through and through ethical; that for 
another, possessed apart from its precepts a unique 
source of stimulus; and that for a third thing, set 
its inspired ethic working not amongst the philos- 
ophers, amongst the elite^ but amongst the ob- 
scurest and most neglected portions of humanity." 
It should be added that the ethical principles 
of Christ found fresh and consistent expression 
in the teachings of his apostles. As the follow- 
ers and servants of Christ men were exhorted to 
do '^ the will of God from the heart." Whatso- 
ever things were " true, honest, just, pure, lovely 
and of good report," these things were to govern 
thought and control action. Christ was exalted 
as " the way, the truth and the life," and his 
disciples everywhere were to be his " living epis- 
tles." Somebody has said '* the ethics of Paul 



THE BIBLE 73 

and John and Christ are quite as worthy of study 
as the ethics of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche." 
He might have truthfully added the names of 
Aristotle and Plato, Kant and Hegel, Spencer and 
Mill, and all other teachers ancient and modern. 

The Epistles are plainly the unfolding of the 
truth that was taught in germinal form in the Gos- 
pels, and were a manifest fulfillment of the dis- 
tinct promise of Christ to his disciples of the 
Spirit of Truth, who should " lead them into all 
the truth," emphatically the truth, the truth per- 
taining to Himself and his kingdom, and the char- 
acter and conduct of his followers; else Christ's 
promise was null and void, and kindled an expec- 
tation that was false. 

5. The fifth method of studying the Bible is 
the religious method, that is, the study of the 
Bible as a Book of religion, a Book which con- 
tains certain great truths which when coordinated 
constitute a system of religious faith or a theology, 
which Boccaccio defined as '' the poetry of God." 
The other methods which have been considered, 
have been found increasingly important. This 
method must be acknowledged to be by far the 
most important of all, the supreme method. As 
a Book of religion the Bible makes its strongest, 
its most imperative appeal to men, and exerts its 
largest educational influence. The truest moral- 



74 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

ity is based upon a religious faith, and the man 
who looks upon the Bible as an Inspired Book of 
religion will find every method of study productive 
of the largest good. 

Sabatier has said, " Man is incurably religious," 
and President Shurman, of Cornell University, 
characterizes man as " a religious animal," and 
says that " without religion a man is only half a 
man." The religious element is as real and as 
integral In a man's nature as the Intellectual, the 
affectional and the volitional. Dean Hodges In a 
chapter on " Religion and Moral Training " af- 
firms, " Religion is not an artificial thing grafted 
on human nature. It Is an Integral part of human 
nature itself. It is native to the soul. Man is 
just as essentially religious as he is social, political, 
moral and aesthetic in nature. Anthropology and 
psychology bear testimony to this fact." Educa- 
tion to be worthy of the name, must include the 
whole being. A recent writer has said, " We must 
define the educated man In terms of life, and not 
of some scholastic experience. And we must de- 
fine him In terms of the whole of life. Washing- 
ton and Lincoln were educated men, though they 
had little experience of the school. The educated 
man is a rounded character, well adjusted by na- 
ture and by training to the world in which he Is 
called to live. He has learned self-mastery, con- 



THE BIBLE 75 

sideratlon for the rights of others and the final 
art, that schools so often fail to teach, of know- 
ing how to learn and keep on learning. Knowl- 
edge that is applied to life and is increased in 
using, sympathy that is ever awake and active as 
a motive power for action, humility and curiosity 
that deepen and broaden the soul in following 
out the thoughts of God, — these are elements of 
the education we desire for all men upon earth." 
The professional athlete is not thereby an edu- 
cated man. He has developed strength of mus- 
cles and skill in their use, but they are only his 
lower, his animal nature. He may have acquired 
hardly the rudiments of an education. The man 
who has amassed knowledge, the facts of history 
and of science, and made himself familiar with the 
problems of philosophy, is not necessarily a fully 
educated man, no matter how many diplomas he 
may carry. His knowledge must be converted 
into wisdom, and his wisdom into character, into 
reverence, into humility, into purity of thought 
and desire, into unselfishness of purpose, into love 
for the things of the spirit and a growing likeness 
to that which is highest and best in personal being. 
Religious faith is the ordained means of accom- 
plishing this, when it becomes dominant in the 
soul. There is a Godward side of man's nature, 
the capacity of knowing and loving and serving 



76 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

the Infinite Spirit, of having fellowship with the 
personal Power above us which makes for right- 
eousness. To neglect this is to remain half-edu- 
cated, with the possibilities of the soul unrealized, 
and the demands of the soul unmet, and the des- 
tiny of the soul uncared for. 

The Bible claims to be preeminently a religious 
Book, a revelation from God, and its contents, 
as well as its influence, justify its claim. It is 
called " the joint product of God and man," *' the 
literature of an inspired race that saw God more 
clearly than any other race." It has been said 
that " when the Bible is at its highest it is litera- 
ture, and when literature is at its highest it is reve- 
lation." No education can claim to be complete 
which does not recognize the inestimable impor- 
tance of the Sacred Scriptures, and have a large 
and definite place for their study, and no education 
can be called Christian, which does not pay proper 
respect to the Book which is the depository and 
vehicle of Christian truth. It is not enough to 
study only the history, or the biography, or even 
the literature of the Bible. That is as far as some 
college studies go. But that would be to omit 
that which is fundamental and vital. That would 
be to pay attention to the prison walls, and ignore 
the life which dwells within. It is the moral and 
religious teaching of the Book (the one is in- 



THE BIBLE 77 

separable from the other) that gives to it its 
supreme value and sacredness to every rational 
mind. 

There are three sources of religious truth, viz., 
the natural world, the inner life with its instincts 
and its conscience, and the Word of God. The 
last is a necessary supplement of the other two, 
and when rightly interpreted, they confirm and 
strengthen each other's testimony. No sublimer 
utterance was ever penned than the Nineteenth 
Psalm, which bursts forth in a tribute of praise 
to the material universe. " The heavens declare 
the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his 
handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and 
night unto night showeth knowledge. Their line 
is gone out through all the earth, and their words 
to the end of the world." It is no wonder that 
such eloquent language has inspired the pens of 
hymn-writers and poets, who have caught some- 
thing of its spirit and voiced its faith in the divine 
Creator and resident Deity of the marvelous 
worlds which fill and swing in the boundless space, 
as against a materialistic and Godless evolution, 
which can create nothing, and against which the 
heart and mind of men persistently rebel. No 
more beautiful spiritual interpretation of the si- 
lent, voiceless world has appeared than that from 
the pen of Bishop H. W. Warren: 



78 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

" The harp is ever singing to itself 

In soft and soul-like sounds we cannot hear ; 
The stars of morning sing, and soundless words 

Make God's commands run swift from sphere to sphere. 
Each flower is always sending incense up, 

As if in act of holy worshiping, 
Till fragrant earth is one great altar, like 

To heaven where saints their prayer-filled censers 
swing. 
The stars send out a thousand rays, writ full 

Of mysteries we cannot read nor see. 
Of histories so long and going forth. 

So vast, the volumes fill infinity. 
O Source Divine of things so fine and high. 

Touch all thy children's souls with power to see 
That vibrant earth and air and boundless sky 

Still throb with immanent Divinity." 

He that hath ears to hear, he will hear. He 
that hath eyes to see, he will see. The testimony 
Is there, whether men recognize it or not, the tes- 
timony to the infinite wisdom, power, wonderful 
skill, aesthetic taste and love of beauty, and the in- 
finite goodness of the personal Creator. Every 
man who studies the objects and laws of the nat- 
ural world, from the most sublime to the most 
minute, may say, if he will, with the ancient sci- 
entist, " I am thinking God's thoughts after Him." 
Someone has said beautifully that the Himalayas 
are only raised letters by which God teaches his 
blind children to read the evidence of his eternal 
power and Godhead. Blessed are the pure in 



THE BIBLE 79 

heart and the devout in spirit, for they shall see 
God here as well as hereafter, in the world of 
nature as well as in the spiritual heavens. All 
things visible may incite to worship, even though 
what may be called the higher and more moral 
attributes of God may not be clearly revealed in 
them. It is nevertheless true as Dr. Holmes 
sang, " Thy glory flames from sun and star," or 
as Browning phrased it, 

"Yeu've seen the world, 
The beauty, the wonder and the power, 
The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades, 
Changes, surprises, — and God made it all: 
For what? . . . What's it all about? 
To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon. 
Wondered at?" 

or as Mrs. Browning phrased it in lines still more 
beautiful and positive, 

*' Earth's crammed with Heaven, 
And every bush aflame with God, 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes." 

In the universal conscience, the inner light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world, 
there is the instinct or intuition of God, the knowl- 
edge of right and wrong, the testimony to the 
moral universe and the supreme Governor of all, 
including every moral being, the hidden, almost 
irrepressible and deathless longing after the In- 



8o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

finite Spirit. As another has said, '^ The listen- 
ing ear of the race can never cease to hearken to 
a Voice that speaks out of the silences beyond the 
range of time and sense." It is the deepest fact 
of human nature. " Thou hast made us for Thy- 
self, and we find no rest until we find it in Thee." 
The Christian Father who uttered those words, 
voiced the cry of the human race. The apostle 
Paul declares that God has not left Himself with- 
out a witness in the inner spirit of all men, 
*' Which show the work of the law written in their 
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and 
their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else 
excusing one another." That conscience, that 
inner light, that law written in the heart, that 
longing after God, has often been silenced, 
dimmed, perverted, maltreated, and made the 
fruitful source of false religions, cruel faiths, 
abominable superstitions, and immoral rites. 
" Men became vain in their imaginations, and 
their foolish heart was darkened. They changed 
the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and 
served the creature more than the Creator." As 
the result, many of the abodes of men have been 
shrouded In darkness, and have been filled with 
all unrighteousness and uncleanness, and must 
have the illumination of a new and stronger light, 
the guiding and directing influence of a completer 



THE BIBLE 8i 

and authenticated Revelation, the regenerating 
and transforming power of a divinely ordained 
Instrumentality. 

That new light, that authenticated Revelation, 
that ordained Instrumentality is the Book we call 
the Word of God. This is the third and neces- 
sary source of religious truth, completing and en- 
ergizing the other sources, and constituting the su- 
preme religious educational asset for mankind. 
This Book, and this Book alone, contains the wis- 
dom that is able to " make men wise unto salva- 
tion and eternal life." 

Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said, 
'* Paganism Is the work of man. One can here 
read imbecility. What do these gods, so boast- 
ful, know more than other mortals? . . . They 
have made a perfect chaos of morals. There is 
not one among them all who has said anything 
new in reference to our future destiny, to the soul, 
to the essence of God, to the creation." Said 
that skeptical philosopher and moralist, Rousseau, 
" I will confess to you that the majesty of the 
Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the 
purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. 
Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all 
their pomp of diction, how mean, how contempti- 
ble, are they, compared with the Scripture. Is it 
possible that a Book, at once so simple and sub- 



82 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

lime, should be merely the work of man? Is it 
possible that the sacred Personage whose history 
it contains should be Himself a mere man? " The 
language of Sir Walter Scott is so familiar as 
hardly to need repetition. 

" Within that awful volume lies 
The mystery of mysteries. 
Happiest they of human race, 
To whom our God has granted grace 
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, 
To lift the latch and force the way; 
And better had they ne'er been born. 
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn." 

Such language in endorsement of the Bible as 
a Book of religion, coming from the lips not of 
professional preachers and teachers, but from the 
lips of representative men of other classes wide 
apart, the great General, the infidel Philosopher 
and the distinguished Novelist, may well dispose 
our minds to inquire studiously as to the teachings 
of this incomparable, cosmopolitan Book. It 
may be said to contain a fourfold revelation. 

I. The Bible contains a revelation of the being 
and character of God, more complete, more 
consistent, more worthy of adoration than can be 
found anywhere else. Whatever other fruits the 
study of comparative religion, now much in vogue, 
may yield, the Bible's conception of God tran- 
scends by an infinite distance all other concep- 



THE BIBLE 83 

tions. Its opening sentence, '' In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth/' surpasses 
in the sublimity of its utterance, in its authoritative 
tone, in its assumption of positive knowledge, and 
in the sweep of its influence, every other sentence 
that was ever penned. A recent writer has said, 
" When this first sentence of the Bible was writ- 
ten it was in ages when men held strange fancies 
and fables concerning the origin of the world. 
This sentence was in opposition to the notion that 
the world sprang into being through chance or by 
blind forces acting within and without it, and em- 
phasized the fact that it was the product of the 
wisdom and will of a personal Being. Some an- 
cient conceptions were atheistic, some pantheistic, 
and some polytheistic; but this single, simple sen- 
tence sets forth the personality, eternity, omnisci- 
ence, omnipotence, and spirituality of God. It ex- 
cludes every possible ism of error in the human 
conception of God." This is the Bible's interpre- 
tation of all origins, its reaffirmation of the teach- 
ing of natural theology as to the wisdom and cre- 
ative power of the eternal Spirit. 

But the Bible does not stop there. It completes 
the perfect picture of the absolutely perfect Being, 
as infinite in holiness and love as in wisdom and 
power, the Possessor of every divine attribute, the 
Personification of every moral excellence, and 



84 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

even going so far as to interpret Deity in the 
terms of loving and thoughtful Fatherhood, and 
declaring " there is none beside Him," " none be- 
fore Him," and " none like unto Him." He is 
represented as " merciful," " gracious," '* long 
suffering," " compassionate," " forgiving iniquity, 
transgression and sin," the divine " Shepherd," 
satisfying, leading, feeding and protecting his 
flock, the Father of the prodigal son, waiting to 
welcome the returning penitent with kiss and robe 
and joyful feast. And then in order to make the 
portrait more real, more comprehensible, more 
resistlessly attractive and commanding, Revela- 
tion gives to the world the story of the incarna- 
tion, a new and unique life, human and divine, 
beautifully natural and convincingly supernatural. 
Son of man and Son of God, " God manifest in 
the flesh," the living illustration of all that is high- 
est in manhood and all that is essential in God- 
hood, so that Christ could say, " He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father." Was ever pic- 
ture so true, so real, so inspiring, so captivating 
to the human heart? Even the infidel, Rousseau, 
was lost in admiration as he contemplated it, and 
his infidelity seemed almost to be swept away by 
the swelling tide of his appreciation, as the doubt 
of Thomas was removed by the ocular evidence of 
his Lord's reality and divinity. He says, " What 



THE BIBLE 85 

sweetness, what purity In his manner! What an 
affecting gracefulness in his delivery I What sub- 
limity in his maxims ! What profound wisdom 
in his discourses ! What presence of mind, what 
subtlety, what truth in his replies! How great 
the command over his passions! Where is the 
man, where the philosopher, who could so live, 
and so die, without weakness, without ostenta- 
tion? . . . Yes, if the life and death of Socrates, 
which nobody presumes to doubt, were those of a 
sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a 
God." 

2. The Bible contains also a revelation of man, 
his character and condition as a moral being, and 
his relation to the God who made him. The 
highest counsel of the old Greek philosopher to 
his fellow man was, *' Know thyself." This was 
the supreme business of life, the Imperative duty 
of every man. It was as if he had said, " The 
unexamined life Is not one fit to be led by man." 
Modern reflection echoes the Importance of the 
ancient mandate. In Charron we read, '' La 
vraye science et le vray etude de Vhomme d est 
Vhommer Alexander Pope endeavors to make 
the command doubly emphatic by concentrating 
man's thought on himself, and shutting out all 
thought of Him who gave him power to think. 



86 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

" Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ; 
The proper study of mankind is man." 

The testimony of Lotze Is accepted by all per- 
sons who are familiar with the literature and 
characters of the Bible: " For the most faithful 
delineation of the ever-recurring fundamental 
characteristics of human life, the Hebrew his- 
tories and hymns are imperishable models.'^ It 
needs to be remarked that no man can know 
himself in his entirety and in his relations until he 
knows something of the Being who brought him 
into life, and whose image he bears. It was a flip- 
pant remark of Henry Sidgwick, if he ever made 
it, that *' as he grew older his interest in what or 
who made the world was altered into interest in 
what kind of a world this is anyway." Man and 
the world are both profound secrets, and will re- 
main such, until they are studied in the light of 
their origin, a guiding and overruling providence 
and purpose, and their final destiny. The Bible 
contains in some true sense every man*s biography, 
written by an unprejudiced and unerring hand, 
and no man can know himself until he knows what 
the Bible says about him. His self-knowledge 
may deceive him, and his human biographer may 
flatter or defame him, but the Bible reveals his 
true image. 

The Bible discloses man's primal glory. It 



THE BIBLE 87 

tells him what he can learn nowhere else, that he 
was created in the Image and likeness of God. 
Whatever resemblance he may bear to the animal 
world about him, whatever true science or science 
falsely so-called may think as to his classification 
with forms of animal life, God set him apart and 
above them all, and gave him dominion over them 
all, God breathed into him his own spirit and en- 
dowed him with his own intellectual and moral 
faculties, and man became a living soul and a son 
of God. This gives to him a dignity and a glory, 
of which science and philosophy know nothing. 
It is not they who have discovered him, but it is 
he who has discovered and given birth to them, 
and they become his servants, the embodiments 
and vehicles of his thoughts, and the means of his 
growth and development. 

President Henry Churchill King wisely sug- 
gests; "If a man's greatest discovery, next to 
the discovery of God, is the discovery of himself, 
and if the complete discovery of himself in all his 
spiritual possibilities involves the discovery of 
God, we may perhaps get a new light on the sig- 
nificance of the Bible for our spiritual life, if we 
think of it as an aid to self-discovery." 

By means of man's moral nature and his cre- 
ated freedom it became possible for man to dis- 
obey God, to forfeit his fellowship and glory, to 



88 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

mar his likeness and sonship, and to lose his peace 
of soul. The Bible conceals nothing. " Sin en- 
tered into the world," we are told, " and death 
by sin." This revelation of Scripture is con- 
firmed by the universal consciousness of man. 
" All we like sheep have gone astray." It is not 
a new truth which the Bible discloses, but the in- 
sistent iteration and enforcement of a truth as old 
and as wide as humanity. To ignore it does not 
change the fact. Men may differ as to the degree 
of demerit and possible consequences, but sin is 
here, an intruder in God's fair world, ever writing 
its dark record in unmistakable characters upon 
individual consciousness, upon domestic life, upon 
social conditions, upon every page of the book of 
human experience. The Bible holds the mirror 
up to life, and reveals not only man's primal 
glory, but his present shame and weakness, peril 
and necessity. It presents no imaginary or over- 
drawn portrait. Every thoughtful man acknowl- 
edges its sad reality as true to the life of man. 
The following obvious statement of fact is bor- 
rowed from Dr. S. Parks Cadman. " Religion, 
as well as science, has lived and will live by the 
certainty of Its ideas, and these ideas are not 
' such stuff as dreams are made of,' but sterling 
convictions, which have shaped and transfigured 
the whole fabric of Western civilization." 



THE BIBLE 89 

3. The Bible contains the revelation of a possi- 
ble restoration of man to union and fellowship 
with God. It proclaims the offer, which would 
be unspeakably wonderful, if it was not so famil- 
iar, of forgiveness and peace through the divine 
Christ. The voices of nature, though many and 
varied, have in them no redemptive note. The 
conscience and moral judgment contain no atoning 
cross of reconciliation and pardon, but only words 
of condemnation. To sit alone in court with an 
enlightened conscience on the bench is to be with- 
out hope. Conscience bears no olive branch, but 
only a naked sword. Christ as a perfect example 
only, resplendent in all the symmetry of a divine 
manhood, would leave man far behind, a conspic- 
uous failure, in the struggle for perfection of 
character and life. The Bible furnishes the one 
means of forgiveness and the one adequate in- 
spiration for a godly and acceptable life, viz., the 
cross of Calvary. " In whom we have redemp- 
tion through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, ac- 
cording to the riches of his grace." It reveals a 
two-fold indwelling, " God in Christ, reconciling 
the world unto Himself," and " Christ in man the 
hope of glory." So we find in the Gospel of 
Christ revealed not only the primal glory of man, 
but his final glory, not only his primitive dignity 
in God's likeness, but his ultimate restoration in 



90 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

the likeness of Jesus Christ through union with 
Him. '' We shall be like Him," says the Apos- 
tle, " for we shall see Him as He is." Faith in 
Christ, submission to Christ, union with Christ, 
this is the culminating truth of a progressive reve- 
lation, this is the central fact in God's plan of sal- 
vation, this is the method and secret of a restored 
manhood. Unless a man has learned this (and 
he learns it nowhere outside of the Bible), there 
is a serious and fatal lack in his education. Not 
only the highest ideal in life, but the highest in- 
centive to nobility of character and the divinely ap- 
pointed means for its attainment, are all painfully 
wanting. Well has Tennyson, the great inter- 
preter of God and man, expressed the truth when 
he sang, 

"Thou seemest human and divine, 
The highest, holiest manhood Thou; 
Our wills are ours, we know not how, 

Our wills are ours to make them thine." 

4. And lastly the Bible contains a clear and 
convincing revelation of immortality, by which is 
meant not simply continued existence beyond the 
grave, but the unending continuance of a blessed 
existence. The old question is still asking itself, 
as it has been from the beginning, " If a man die, 
shall he live again? " Science is very busy to-day, 
endeavoring to discover proof that death does 



THE BIBLE 91 

not end all, that the spirit survives the cessation of 
the bodily functions, and goes on to an endless ex- 
istence. Matter It Is claimed is indestructible. It 
Is a reasonable Inference that personality survives 
all change. Nature furnishes many suggestive 
analogies of a resurrection-life. The IngersoU 
Lectureship has been established at Harvard Uni- 
versity to discover and establish a scientific basis 
for the immortality of the soul. The doctrine of 
a future life has had a place in some form In all 
ethnic religions, in shadowy beliefs, in religious 
rites, in preserved mummies, and even In the faiths 
of the most savage tribes and peoples. The In- 
dian has his happy hunting ground. The uni- 
versal longing has found expression in gross forms 
of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls. 
The hope has been argued from the Incomplete- 
ness of this life, which is distressingly full of un- 
fulfilled promises, of unrealized plans, of blighted 
hopes, of buds that have been broken off before 
the time of flower and fruit. The doctrine has 
even been grounded in the justice of the holy and 
infinite Creator. Tennyson reasoned after this 
manner, 

"Thou wilt not leave us In the dust; 

Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 

He thinks he was not made to die; 
And Thou hast made him; Thou art just." 



92 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Jouffroy, a French writer, has said, " Every man 
feels within himself a crowd of desires and facul- 
ties which this life does not content; and he would 
deem himself very unhappy, and Him who has 
made him very unjust, if his destiny were never 
to attain this happiness, this perfection, of which 
he has the idea. ... It is that which unavoidably 
suggests to him thoughts of the other life; and 
these thoughts once awakened in his mind, there 
is no more rest for him, if the doubt remains, and 
If no clear solution comes to solve It." Professor 
John Fiske, in " The Destiny of Man," says, " For 
my part, I believe in the immortality of the soul, 
not In the sense in which I accept the demonstra- 
ble truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith 
In the reasonableness of God's work." Poets, 
philosophers, religionists, scientists, have all been 
lending a hand in the advocacy of this great and 
greatly desiderated doctrine of a future life. 

How refreshing, how heartening, how comfort- 
ing, how satisfying. It Is to turn away from all 
these conjectures, and Inferences, and blind rea- 
sonings, which can never bring rest and peace, and 
listen to the clear, strong, positive, authoritative 
affirmations of the Bible, and know that here we 
have testimony which no doubt can shake and no 
denial can destroy. In the Old Testament there 
were bright and morning stars whose light was 



THE BIBLE 93 

sufficient to comfort and sustain the souls of the 
patriarchs and the people in anticipation of life's 
hastening end. The prophet Daniel declared with 
unshaken confidence, " And many of them that 
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to 
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlast- 
ing contempt. A,nd they that be wise shall shine 
as the brightness of the firmament, and they that 
turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever 
and ever." In these words there is, in the words 
of an able commentator, " obvious reference to 
the final resurrection of all men, the just and the 
unjust, the eternal joy of the first and the unend- 
ing woe of the second, and the glorious reward of 
those who had been successful workers for right- 
eousness." In Job, perhaps the oldest of all the 
Biblical books, we read the confident assurance, 
" For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that 
He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth : and 
though after my skin worms destroy this body, 
yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see 
for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not 
another." The meaning is most apparent. The 
afflicted servant of God " now turns for comfort, 
under the harsh treatment of men, to his assured 
belief in a consolatory truth of universal and 
permanent Importance, which he desires to have 
not only inscribed in a book, but also more last- 



94 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

ingly and publicly recorded by being engraven on 
a rock. ... It is therefore to his hope of vindi- 
cation in a future life that he here refers, encour- 
aging himself in the conviction that after death 
he should joyfully behold his ever-living Vindi- 
cator." In the Psalms we read, '' For thou wilt 
not leave my soul in hell ; neither wilt Thou suffer 
thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt 
show me the path of life; in thy presence is ful- 
ness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures 
for evermore." Although these striking words, 
as interpreted by both Peter and Paul, refer pri- 
marily to the resurrection of Christ, the thought 
of the Psalmist is naturally expanded to include 
himself and all true servants of God, who know 
the path of life, which inevitably leads to God's 
presence and communion with Him, " and from 
that springs, of necessity, the idea of immortality." 
It would seem that the ancient Psalmist antici- 
pated the thought of the writer to the Thessa- 
lonians when he said, " For if we believe that 
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which 
sleep in Jesus, will God bring with Him." Of 
the quotation from the Psalm Perowne says, " In 
the utterance of this confident persuasion and hope, 
David was carried beyond himself. He spake as 
a prophet, knowing that God had promised of 
the fruit of his body to raise up Christ to sit on 



THE BIBLE 95 

his throne. The hope of his own immortality 
was based upon, and bound up in, the life of Him 
who was at once his Son and his Lord." Only 
one other passage needs to be quoted of those 
found in the Old Testament. *' As for me I will 
behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satis- 
fied when I awake with thy likeness," words which 
have brought inexpressible comfort to minds per- 
plexed by questionings as to the future state. 
Perowne declares these words are not to be un- 
derstood as meaning, " When I wake up from 
sleep," nor, " When I find deliverance from the 
present night of sorrow and suffering. ... I can- 
not doubt that the reference is to a resurrection." 
The Psalmist seems to have anticipated again the 
language of the New Testament, where we are 
told, " We shall be like Him, for we shall see 
Him as He is." 

It may be added that the translation of Enoch 
and the translation of Elijah were a part of the 
sacred history of the Jewish people, as firmly be- 
lieved as any recorded events in that history, and 
must have added their strong and unique testi- 
mony to the doctrine of a future life. 

Rather brilliant " morning stars " we have 
found these passages to be. We read them to^ 
day at every Christian burial. Yet they fade 
away in the fuller light and glory of the teaching 



96 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

of Him who spake as never man spake. It will 
be sufficient to quote a few of the utterances of 
Christ as to the doctrine of immortality. ^' I am 
the resurrection and the life. He that believeth 
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." 
" Because I live, ye shall live also." " Marvel 
not at this; for the hour is coming, in which all 
that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and 
shall come forth, they that have done good unto 
the resurrection of life; and they that have done 
evil unto the resurrection of damnation." Who 
can ever forget or distrust the most beautiful 
and consolatory words that were ever spoken by 
lips human or divine, that carried unspeakable 
comfort and strength to the hearts of the sorrow- 
ing disciples, who listened to them, and have been 
carrying comfort and strength to the hearts of the 
sorrowing and dying ever since, and can never lose 
their power? " In my Father's house are many 
mansions, if it were not so, I would have told 
you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if 
I go and prepare a place for you I will come again 
and receive you unto myself, that where I am, 
there ye may be also." 

Christ believed in a future life. He foretold 
his own resurrection, and accomplished it to es- 
tablish faith in Himself and his message. The 
disciples believed in it, and went everywhere 



THE BIBLE 97 

preaching Christ and the resurrection. There Is 
no more Indubitable fact In all history, ancient or 
modern. There Is no more trustworthy truth In 
the axioms of science or philosophy. A faith In 
Immortality rests upon the word, the veracity of 
the Son of God. Christ " brought life and Im- 
mortality to light In the Gospel." The New 
Testament Is filled with the mighty, transforming 
power of the world to come. That which may 
have seemed to some dimly revealed before, now 
shines In the light of a thousand suns. What the 
world was seeking and longing to know for a 
certainty, Is now a part of the certified knowledge 
of mankind. The grave has been Illuminated 
and Its darkness dispelled. It Is no longer a 
closed tomb, but an open doorway. Death, to 
use the strong language of Scripture, has been 
" abolished," and the certain knowledge of this 
blessed fact Is contained In the Bible. 

Some persons profess with great Inconsistency 
to repudiate the Bible and Its teachings, and yet 
are Indebted to It for their highest conceptions of 
morality, and for all they know of God and a fu- 
ture life. 

The following words are from the pen of the 
English Professor of Moral Philosophy already 
quoted, J. Bradford Thomson, *' A nature with 
such requirements cannot be Indifferent to the pro- 



98 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

fessions and promises of the religion of Christ. 
Is It likely that man, so constituted, will turn aside 
from the revelations of Christianity, and adopt 
in preference the teaching of the materialist and 
atheist, according to whom man perishes like the 
brutes and is no more ; a foam-fleck upon the rush- 
ing river of universal being? Or will he not 
rather exclaim, God made the soul for immortality, 
and appointed immortality for the soul? Here is 
found the true and longed-for rest, here the strong 
and sustaining hope." What Milton thought 
should be true of every great book. Is preeminently 
characteristic of the books of the Bible, " the pre- 
cious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and 
treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." 

Here then we have the fourfold revelation of 
the Bible, viz., God the Infinite Spirit, the su- 
preme Object of worship and affection; man, his 
true character, his origin and destiny; the possible 
union through Christ between man and his Maker, 
and a real spiritual fellowship with Him; and the 
doctrine of a future life, established beyond a 
question or the shadow of a doubt. Without the 
light which the Bible sheds on these, the greatest 
of all truths, the world would be still groping In 
darkness. An education which does not include 
these verities of knowledge would be deplorably 
incomplete, and Inadequate to meet the demands 



THE BIBLE 99 

of the moral soul. The mind which does not wel- 
come and appropriate these vital, transcendent 
truths, will have empty spaces which no amount of 
secular knowledge can fill, and a diminished life 
which must occasion everlasting regret. This is 
the standard of fullness of knowledge and com- 
pleteness of life, as Christ affirmed, " To know 
Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom 
Thou hast sent; this is life eternal." 

It is because of this supreme characteristic of 
the Bible, viz., that it is the veritable Word of 
God, an inspired and authoritative revelation of 
his character and will, a complete and final mes- 
sage of grace and salvation to all the generations 
of mankind, commanded by Christ to be made 
known in all the world to every creature, that Bible 
Societies have been established and generously 
supported in Christian lands. It is interesting 
to know that in the last year in order to carry out 
the divine commission and to meet in some meas- 
ure the world-wide need, the English and Ameri- 
can Bible Societies have published and distributed 
in hundreds of languages between ten and twelve 
million copies of the Sacred Scriptures in whole 
or in parts. Such a work, continued from year 
to year, will prove to be no small contribution to 
the effort to dispel the darkness, the ignorance and 
superstitions of men, and shed abroad the light of 



100 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Him who is the Light of the world, and in whose 
name every knee shall eventually bow. 

The bearing of this paper is more than per- 
sonal. It has to do not only with man as an in- 
dividual, a moral and intellectual unit, and with 
the necessary completeness of his education, but 
it has to do with man as a social being, a member 
of society and a citizen of the Republic. The ed- 
ucation which a man needs, and must have for 
himself, society and the nation need, and must 
have for themselves. The use of the Bible, 
therefore, is intimately connected with the good 
morals of the community, with the purity of the 
social hfe, with the stability and perpetuity of 
good government, and with the progress of the 
race. It was John Milton who wrote, " There 
are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no 
orations equal to those of the prophets, and no 
.politics like those which the Scriptures teach. 

Better teaching 
The solid rules of civil government 
In their majestic, unaffected style, 
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt. 
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, 
What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat; 
These only, with our law, best form a king." 

Reference is often made to the undisputed fact 
that the Bible was largely responsible for the 



THE BIBLE loi 

English Reformation, and for the civil and re- 
ligious liberty which England and America enjoy. 
Indeed democracy itself is declared to be the fruit 
of the Influence of the Bible. Dr. Cleland B. 
McAfee says, " The English Reformation received 
less from Luther than from the secret reading 
of the Scriptures over the whole country. What 
we call the English spirit of free inquiry was fos- 
tered and developed by Wycliffe and his Lollards 
with the English Scriptures In their hands. Out 
of it has grown, as out of no other one root, the 
freedom of the English and American people." 
The founders of this Republic brought with them 
the spirit of reverence for things sacred and divine, 
high moral standards, regard for law, and above 
all, the accountability of the individual soul to 
God; and all these they had learned from their 
Book of religion. It was these that Inspired them 
and guided them in their great undertaking. Pro- 
fessor Bliss Perry says, " One Reverence, at least, 
was common to the Englishman of Virginia and 
to the Englishman of Plymouth and Massachu- 
setts Bay. They were joint heirs of the Refor- 
mation, children of that waxing and puissant Eng- 
land, which was a nation of one Book, the Bi- 
ble, ... a Book rich beyond all others In human 
experience; full of poetry, history, drama; the 
test of conduct; the manual of devotion; and above 



102 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

all and blinding all other considerations by the 
very splendor of the thought, a Book believed to 
be the veritable Word of the unseen God. For 
these colonists in the wilderness, as for the Prot- 
estant Europe which they had left irrevocably 
behind them, the Bible was the plainest of all sym- 
bols of idealism; it was the first of the " Rever- 
ences." Again he says, " The United States is 
properly called a Christian nation, not merely be- 
cause the Supreme Court has so affirmed it, but 
because ' a Christian nation ' expresses the his- 
torical form which the religious idealism of the 
country has made its ow,n. The Bible is still con- 
sidered by the mass of the people a sacred Book; 
oaths in courts of law, oaths of persons elected to 
great office, are administered upon it." It should 
be added, as indicating the Christian character of 
the nation, that the Congress of the United States, 
and the army and navy have their chaplains, ap- 
pointed by the Government and salaried out of 
the public treasury. Moreover, State and City 
administrations are wont to be inaugurated and 
public buildings to be dedicated by prayer to the 
God of the Christian revelation. An attempt to 
eliminate these religious officials and to abolish 
these religious services would be met by a nation- 
wide protest, and would not only proclaim this 
nation as a Godless nation, but would reduce it to 



THE BIBLE 103 

a worse than heathen condition, for heathen na- 
tions have their authorized religious ceremonies. 
The Supreme Court of one of our States has re- 
cently taken action " barring finally and perma- 
nently, on constitutional grounds, the Bible from 
public use in the public schools." A correspond- 
ent to a religious journal commenting on thisi 
action, justly says, " It sounds anomalous that in 
a nation which owes Its existence to the devotion 
of its founders to the principles of the Bible as 
such, its youth should be denied the benefit of 
Bible-reading, not to say Bible-study, in their 
school exercises. But such seems to be one of 
the paradoxical results of the logical ( ?) applica- 
tion of the principles of liberty of conscience and 
separation of Church and State." The cor- 
respondent adds, '^ The evil of this Is that appar- 
ently it puts a public ban or stigma upon the Bible, 
under which the lovers of the Book cannot permit 
It to remain. The very appearance of discrim- 
inating against the Bible must be removed." 
That Supreme Court In order to be consistent In 
its action should decree that all literature and text 
books making any reference to the Bible, or In- 
culcating lessons contained In the Bible, or show- 
ing the fruits of the Bible In individual character 
and in national history, our own national history 
included, should be excluded from the public 



I04 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

schools forever. Neither modern English litera- 
ture, nor the marked progress in ethical ideals 
and In philosophic thought during the last three 
hundred years, nor modern history in any of its 
phases, can be studied intelligently without a 
knowledge of the Bible. 

One great reason, probably the great reason, 
why the founders of the Republic exalted the Bible 
to such a conspicuous place, was because of the in- 
dissoluble connection which they believed to exist 
between morals and religion, between personal, 
social and political morality and the great truths 
of the Christian faith. In their judgment the 
'highest morality was based upon the teachings of 
a divine Revelation, and must be sustained and 
perpetuated by them; the Bible which had given 
to them their essential freedom and democracy 
was necessary to preserve them and keep them 
pure. Washington said in words which should 
ever be remembered by the American nation, 
" The free cultivation of letters, the unbounded 
extension of commerce, the progressive refinement 
of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, 
and above all, the pure and benign light of Reve- 
lation have had a meliorating influence on man- 
kind, and Increased the blessings of society. Of 
all the dispositions and habits of men which lead 
to political prosperity, religion and morality are 



THE BIBLE 105 

Indispensable supports. In vain would that man 
claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor 
to subvert these pillars of human happiness, these 
firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. 
The mere politician, equally with the pious man, 
ought to respect them. And let us with caution 
indulge the supposition, that morality can be sus- 
tained without religion. Whatever may be con- 
ceded to the influence of refined education on 
minds of a peculiar structure, reason and experi- 
ence both forbid us to expect that national moral- 
ity can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." 
These noble words uttered without fear of being 
charged with narrowness or bigotry, disclose a 
rational and farsighted statesmanship which will 
ever make the name of Washington illustrious. 

In like manner Judge Hornblower, Chief Jus- 
tice of New Jersey, who was born the first year 
after the Declaration of Independence and died 
widely honored in the third year of the Civil War, 
declared, " Let this precious volume have its 
proper influence on the hearts of men, and our 
liberties are safe, our country blessed, and the 
world happy. There Is not a tie that unites us 
to our families, not a virtue that endears us to our 
country, nor a hope that thrills our bosoms in the 
prospect of future happiness, that has not its 
foundation in this Bible. It Is the charter of char- 



io6 THINKING GOD'S. THOUGHTS 

ters, the palladium of liberty, the standard of 
righteousness." 

It was the prevalence of such views as these that 
led the fathers to establish schools of learning 
and to encourage the organization of Christian 
churches, that we might be an Intelligent, moral, 
upright and God-fearing people, whose prayer 
should ever be, " Let the beauty of the Lord our 
God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of 
our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands 
establish Thou it." They had no thought of an 
education which did not include morality and re- 
ligion. And although they firmly believed in the 
great principle of religious liberty, the separation 
of Church and State, they did not believe In the 
misinterpretation and perversion of that principle 
which would separate religion from the State. 
The Bible was read In the schools, not as a sec- 
tarian book, but as a book of morals and religion, 
with its silent but powerful appeal to the reverence 
of the pupils, their love of truth and honor, their 
recognition of the being of God and the spiritual 
nature of man, and a belief in the immortal life 
and an Invisible world, and prayer was offered 
to the Lord and Maker of us all. It is to be 
feared that we are drifting away from the wise 
spirit and purpose of the fathers, that in our nar- 
row and erroneous Interpretation of religious lib- 



THE BIBLE 107 

erty and the meaning of the separation of Church 
and State, we are robbing the State of the princi- 
pal means of its healthy growth and prosperity, 
and destroying that which has given to us our re- 
ligious liberty, and Is its only preservative. 

Bishop Anderson of Chicago says, " Education 
has been completely secularized as if man had 
no soul, and the world had no God. Religion has 
been as completely isolated as if character had no 
place In a child's education. Our education Is 
losing its religious values. Our religion is losing 
its educational values." 

The State is bound to be the protector and pro- 
moter of the morals of the people for its own 
sake. It exempts Church property, as It does 
school property, from taxation, because Christian 
churches minister to the peace, the good order and 
purity of the community. Without them and 
their unceasing ministry, life, property and hap- 
piness would all be Imperiled. The State sets 
apart the Sunday as a day of rest and an oppor- 
tunity for worship, because It believes that such 
an ordinance Is for the health and good morals of 
the people, and for the protection of their rights. 
If a man from conscientious scruples insists upon 
observing Saturday, there is no law against It; but 
his duty is clear, that is, to have two days of rest, 
one for his conscience's sake and a second for his 



io8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

neighbor's sake, that his rest may not be dis- 
turbed or his rights Invaded. In like manner the 
State has a right not only to insist upon the educa- 
tion of the young people, but to determine its 
character, that It shall possess a distinctly moral 
element, that it shall not be non-moral or God- 
less or non-patriotic or unpatriotic. Sects may 
add to It, but they ought not to be allowed to 
change or diminish it. The State should be con- 
trolled and determined by the thought of Its own 
high Interests. It Is a matter of Imperative needs 
and of self-preservation. All education should be 
under the supervision of the State, not only public 
education, but that of private Institutions, sup- 
ported by private funds, especially if the State ex- 
empts their properties from taxation. The edu- 
cation should be such as will strengthen moral 
character as well as Inform the mind, and will 
prepare for good citizenship. A college sup- 
ported by a religious denomination may teach sec- 
tarianism in addition, If It chooses to do so, unless 
the tenets and practices of the denomination are 
immoral, as In the case of the Mormons. Then 
the State has no option but to assume control of 
its educational system, and purge it of Its per- 
nicious and dangerous elements. If a college 
charter prohibits sectarianism In its teaching but 
still provides and Insists that it shall be a Chris- 



THE BIBLE 109 

tian college, and give a Christian education, then 
its teachers are honorably bound to avoid sectarian 
teaching, and are bound In equal honor to build 
up Christian faith, Christian morality and posi- 
tive Christian character. To hold their positions 
with the approval of conscience and the approval 
of their fellow men, their whole Influence, by 
teaching and example, must be constructive of the 
fundamental positions of the Christian religion, 
and not destructive. Infidelity and skepticism can 
be as sectarian as faith, and the worst kind of 
sectarianism is a sectarian infidelity, and that 
should be prohibited in every educational institu- 
tion of whatever grade In the land, lest the solid 
foundations of government be destroyed. His- 
tory Is not without its solemn warnings. 

It is sometimes said that every branch of knowl- 
edge, language, history, science, philosophy, so- 
ciology and even mathematics can be taught not 
only In a Christian spirit and In a Christian man- 
ner, but so as to leave a Christian impression upon 
character and life, and minister to the strengthen- 
ing and confirmation of Christian faith. Profes- 
sor John Fiske declared in 1886, " As In the roar- 
ing loom of time the endless web of events is 
woven, each strand shall make more and more 
clearly visible the living garment of God." Pro- 
fessor Shaler, also of Harvard University, says 



no THINKING GOD^S THOUGHTS 

in ** The Interpretation of Nature," a strongly 
theistic book, '' As the conception of these and 
other laws and principles operating in nature be-* 
comes more complicated, naturalists are being 
driven step by step to hypothecate the presence in 
the universe of conditions which are best explained 
by the supposition that the direction of affairs is 
in the control of Something like our own intelli- 
gence. ... In other words, it seems to me that 
the naturalist is most likely to approach the posi- 
tion of the philosophical theologian by paths which 
at first seemed to lie far apart from his domain." 
Sir Oliver Lodge closed his Presidential Address 
before the meeting of the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, held in September, 
19 13, with these significant words, "We are 
deaf and blind to the immanent grandeur around 
us, unless we have insight enough to appreciate 
the whole, and to recognize in the woven fabric 
of existence, flowing steadily from the loom of 
an infinite progress towards perfection the ever- 
growing garment of a transcendent God." This 
language is strikingly similar to that of John 
Fiske. An editor of a religious journal, com- 
menting on this Address, said, *' The more recent 
developments of science have been all in the direc- 
tion of confirming the supremacy of the spiritual, 
the truth of creational evolution, the existence of 



THE BIBLE iii 

God, and the immortality of the soul/' It seems 
evident as another has said that, " Science is thus 
leading to something beyond science as alone sup- 
plying the solution of the world's riddle." A 
living Professor of Biology, in an article re- 
cently published, goes farther and afiirms, " Real 
religion finds no better ally than real science, and 
false religion no saner foe. The insight of sci- 
ence must find a present God, an abiding and im- 
manent God, living, not dead, the great ' I am ' ; 
a working God, not one who did work once, but 
quit it; not a dead idol, or a dead notion, but the 
pulsing flame and force in all and through all and 
above all, the one true God ' in whom all things 
consists.' . . . Science tends more and more not 
only to show, but to prove, that the Christian life 
is the only entirely rational life; that all it de- 
mands is a sane and vital consistency with the 
ethical needs and hungers of our nature to make 
complete one whole human being, in character and 
conduct, as God meant it; that there is something 
in us that responds nobly to every item of the 
Christian programme ; in other words, that Chris- 
tianity is psychologically and scientifically rational. 
. . . The outlook of science is not toward a new 
religion, but an all-pervading Christian religion, 
the paragon and perfection of sanity; neither 



112 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

fanaticism .nor unreason, but righteousness, peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost." 

That Professor is evidently a convinced and a 
pronounced believer in the reality, the universality 
and the finality of the Christian religion, and be- 
lieves that his scientific knowledge is confirmatory 
of every item of the Christian faith. He has 
found that " the fear of the Lord is the beginning 
of wisdom," and also the middle and the end. 
Most teachers of science are in accord with him. 
Would that all were like-minded, and had as full 
an appreciation of the responsibilities of their high 
and holy calling. 

Many American colleges and universities have 
established chairs of Biblical Literature and His- 
tory, believing that the curriculum would be sadly 
deficient without such instruction. In many of 
them, possibly in all, the instruction needs to be 
reconstructed and expanded to a larger value and 
service, covering the varied uses to which the re- 
markable Book offers itself, viz., historical, bi- 
ographical, literary, ethical and religious. There 
are few departments in a college course, in which 
the Bible would not be at home. A recent Uni- 
versity Alumni Monthly contained a prepared list 
of books for the guidance of students, which every 
student ought to know by personal intimate ac- 
quaintance. The list comprised the names of 



THE BIBLE 113 

about sixty authors, ancient and modern, and in- 
cluded more than two hundred books. There 
were Homer and Plato, Cicero and Virgil, Plu- 
tarch and Marcus Aurellus, Dante and Chaucer, 
Bacon and Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan, 
Goethe and Victor Hugo, and English and Amer- 
ican historians, novelists and poets. But the Bible 
was placed at the head of the list. Of course it 
was, and would have been had the list been many 
times longer. 

But the great problem at the present time Is 
with the public school, how the Bible may be re- 
stored to its former place and lend Its marvelously 
helpful influence and greatly needed aid to the edu- 
cation of the rising generation.* Many of the 
teachers, both men and women, are Christians, 
openly connected with Christian churches, and 
their high personal character, known attitude to- 
ward the Christian religion, and their general ad- 
ministration of their schools exert a positive in- 
fluence for good upon the minds of the children 

* Inquiries sent to the Superintendents of Schools in the 
different States elicited the following replies. In twelve States 
the oldest in the Republic, the Bible is required to be read in 
the schools daily, according to a long established custom. In 
thirteen States it is not excluded, and the reports state that it 
is read quite generally in the schools. In five States the reports 
state simply that it is read in a part of the schools. In two 
States the reading of the Bible is said to be encouraged, but 
the results are not given. And in one State it is left to local 
Boards, whose action is /not reported. No reports from the 
other States are given, probably because none were received. 



114 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

and youth under their care. They are living il- 
lustrations of the Christian spirit and its molding 
power upon character. They teach obedience to 
authority, loyalty to duty, love for truth and hon- 
esty, and respect for the rights of others, and in 
many ways they are not only imparting the ele- 
ments of secular education, but are seeking faith- 
fully to prepare their pupils for the important du- 
ties of citizenship in a nation, in which the power 
rests upon the intelligence and purity and high 
moral principles of the people. Professors 
Sneath and Hodges, joint authors of a small vol- 
ume on " Moral Training in the School and 
Home," acknowledge the silent and important in- 
fluence of the religious teacher in the work of edu- 
cation in these words — " The personality of the 
teacher is the constant text-book of the school. 
The religious teacher, conscious of God, devoted 
to the highest ideals, looking toward the life un- 
seen and immortal, will overcome all limitations 
and temporary hindrances, and make the school a 
religious influence. Morality will be infused with 
religion as flowers are filled with fragrance." 

It has been well said, " Morality must be lived 
before it can be taught; it is first introduced into 
school life by example. . . . Ethics makes no 
distinction between master and pupil." 

But great and beneficent as are the work and 



THE BIBLE 115 

Influence of sucH teachers, the results are acknowl- 
edged by educators themselves to be far from sat- 
isfactory. Me*^ of eminence in the educational 
world, men of I?tge experience and wide observa- 
tion, are recognizing and confessing the weakness 
and inadequacy of our present methods of educa- 
tion, even for the purpose of good citizenship, of 
high toned morality and honest dealing between 
man and man. Dr. Charles W. Eliot, late Presi- 
dent of Harvard University, in an address before 
the Connecticut Teachers' Association a few years 
since, acknowledged frankly and regretfully " the 
failures and shortcomings of American education," 
saying it did not furnish a successful method of 
dealing with certain personal vices and social evils, 
whose persistence was sadly disappointing to the 
friends and advocates of popular education. Ed- 
ucation, It Is believed, must have Introduced into 
it somehow a stronger and more potent moral ele- 
ment. It must somehow be made to touch the 
deeper things of the spirit and kindle the nobler 
emotions of the heart. Inciting to reverence, purity, 
self-restraint, self-sacrifice and worthy ambitions. 
This conception of education is by no means 
new or modern. It is as old as Greek philosophy, 
if it is rightly interpreted. Professor Irving Bab- 
bitt of Harvard University says, " We are told 
that the aim of Socrates in his teaching of the 



ii6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

young was not to make them efficient, but to in- 
spire in them reverence and restraint; for to make 
them efficient, said Socrates, w^^'-hout reverence 
and restraint, was simply to equip them with 
ampler means for harm." " Not to make them 
efficient," said Socrates (we are hearing much in 
these practical days about the great need of effi- 
ciency), "but to inspire in them reverence and 
restraint," reverence for law, for truth and justice, 
and the higher values of life, and the restraint of 
the evil passions and appetites of the heart, and 
of selfish and unworthy ambitions. Heeren, the 
Greek historian, tells us significantly that " Greece 
fell when things sacred ceased to be sacred." All 
its art and education, philosophy and culture, did 
not save it from decay. 

The following paragraph is quoted from an 
English author, " But the realization that re- 
ligion is fundamental both to national greatness 
and to the moral progress of human nature should 
be a permanent conviction of the mind, the deep- 
est and the most earnest — a conviction entirely 
independent of chance occurrence for its emphasis. 
From the beginning of time there have been no 
morals without religion; and every period of the 
world's history of a great moral decadence, and 
the downfall of mighty empires, has been pre- 
ceded by the triumphs of skepticism." 



THE BIBLE 117 

Emile Boutroux, a teacher of teachers at the 
Fontenay School, says, '' Even in the eighteenth 
century Rousseau Inquired whether Intellectual 
progress has moral progress for its necessary 
consequence; he maintained that for civilization 
to have the happy effect of transforming a human 
being acting by Instinct Into a reasonable and free 
Individual, It must be dominated by the Idea of 
the moral determinations of human nature." 

The National Educational Association, in Its 
Declaration of Principles In 1905, affirmed " The 
ultimate object of popular education is to teach 
the children how to live righteously, healthily and 
happily, and that to accomplish this object it Is 
essential that every school inculcate the love of 
truth, justice, purity and beauty. . . . The build- 
ing of character Is the real aim of the schools and 
the ultimate reason for the expenditure of mil- 
lions for their maintenance." 

The Christian Register^ a Unitarian organ, 
wisely says, — " The more we open the world to 
what we call civilization, and the more education 
we give it of the kind we call scientific, the greater 
are the dangers to modern society, unless In some 
way we contrive to make the world better." 

And Professors Sneath and Hodges declare — 
'' Boys and girls may go out from such a school 
. . . Ignorant of the value of the virtues, and 



ii8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

resenting authority. They may be sent out into 
the community equipped to do evil intelligently, 
and inclined to do it. The very excellence of 
the intellectual instruction may make the school 
a menace to the State." 

Can this " ultimate object " of popular educa- 
tion be accomplished without the aid of moral 
teaching enforced by a religious motive and re- 
ligious truth? Herbart expresses the wide- 
spread conviction when he says that the impera- 
tive need in education is " character-training based 
on an irrefragable foundation of morality." 
Should the faithful teachers be deprived of the 
slightest use of an instrumentality which is the 
most hopeful, if not the only possible one, for 
the accomplishment of the ultimate object of edu- 
cation, which is the main justification of the 
State's enormous expenditure? Has the Sta'te 
the right to recognize the Bible and Its influence 
in any way as a necessary part of an educational 
outfit? Or must it leave to the uncertainty or the 
utter neglect of the home, or the limited oppor- 
tunity of the Sunday School, whose Influence only 
a part of the children enjoy, a work on which it 
depends for Its peace and Its abiding prosperity? 
Here Is the problem. The Jews and the Roman 
Catholics (strange to say) object to the simple 
reading of the Bible in the public schools, though 



THE BIBLE 119 

by no means all of them. Some Protestants ob- 
ject, basing their opposition upon their conception 
of the great doctrine of the separation of Church 
and State, which they interpret as meaning the 
separation of religion and the State. Yet there 
is an increasing demand, growing out of a felt 
necessity, for a recognition of the Bible in our 
public school system. Its literary influence is 
needed by all, especially by those who are not to 
enjoy the opportunities which a college course 
may offer. Its charm can be felt by the young- 
est minds, and its elevation of the literary taste. 
It has been called '' the key to modern culture, '^ 
and opens the door to the better enjoyment of the 
true riches of our libraries. But above all, Its 
moral and religious influence Is needed by the 
mind in its most plastic period, when Impressions 
sink deepest and abide longest; and the Impres- 
sions made by the pure Word of God will be 
good and only good, and helpful to the family life 
and to parental authority and discipline, whatever 
may be the particular religious faith of the par- 
ents, as well as a determining Influence upon the 
character of the children. 

To quote again from the authors above men- 
tioned — ^" If the function of the school Is to send 
out, not merely persons who can read, write and 
cipher, but good citizens, then It Is plain that the 



I20 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

highest service the school can render to the com- 
munity is to secure the goodness of those citizens 
by founding it on the soundest possible basis." 
In order to accomplish this it is evident that moral 
sanctions must be enforced by religious sanctions. 
President Stanley Hall says, " The realization that 
God's laws are not like those of parents and 
teachers, evadible, suspensible, but changeless, and 
their penalties sure as the laws of nature, is a 
most important factor in moral training." 

Mr. Huxley is compelled to confess, " I have 
always been strongly in favor of secular educa- 
tion, in the sense of education without theology; 
but I must confess I have been no less seriously 
perplexed to know by what practical measures the 
religious feeling, which Is the essential basis of 
conduct, was to be kept up, in the present utterly 
chaotic state of opinion on these matters, without 
the use of the Bible. The Pagan moralists lack 
life and color, and even the noble stoic, Marcus 
Aurelius Antoninus, is too high and refined for 
an ordinary child." This Is the glory of the 
Sacred Scripture, that while its thoughts often 
tax the minds of the most learned and mature, its 
language is suited to the simplest and the hum- 
blest. " A child can play in Its waters, and an 
elephant can swim In them." 

Different remedies are being urged by many who 



THE BIBLE 121 

are interested in the best education of the young 
and in the welfare of the nation, for the serious 
neglect to secure the full value of the Bible as 
an educational influence upon the life of youth. 
Of course the instruction in the Christian home 
and the Sunday School needs to be advanced to 
the highest point of perfection, but even then a 
large portion of the scholars are not included un- 
der such influences, and the responsibility of the 
State is not met. It has been suggested that the 
schools close one hour earlier each day or that 
a half day each week be given up, and that the 
scholars of such parents as are willing be per- 
mitted to receive instruction from especially ap- 
pointed teachers in the Bible, and in the applica- 
tion of its teachings to conduct and life. It has 
also been suggested that the different religious 
denominations withdraw their children from the 
general public schools, and organize them into 
sectarian schools which shall be under the imme- 
diate supervision of the Church authorities, and 
in which the tenets and practices of the individual 
Church may be freely taught. This is already be- 
ing done by the Roman Catholic Church, and the 
children in large numbers are being gathered in 
parochial schools, and taught by priestly teachers 
in courses of instruction, over which the State has 
no control, and of which it knows absolutely noth- 



122 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

ing. The reports of parents who have with- 
drawn their children from these schools because 
of dissatisfaction with the education they were re- 
ceiving, state that the education is superficial and 
inadequate, and is calculated to make the pupils 
Roman Catholics first rather than intelligent citi- 
zens of a free Republic, in which the conscience 
is free, and every man is responsible only to God 
and the revelation of his will, which He has made 
in his inspired Word. Moreover, the Roman 
Catholic authorities are making bold and per- 
sistent demands for a share in the public funds 
for the maintenance of their schools, and already 
confidently boast of speedy success by reason of a 
rapidly increasing immigrant vote, which will be 
able to dictate party-politics, and control legisla- 
tion. There should be but one reply to this de- 
mand, viz., that school funds can never be used 
for sectarian purposes, that consent in one case 
would establish a most confusing and dangerous 
precedent, and would be a direct and flagrant vio- 
lation of the fundamental principle enunciated in 
the national constitution. 

The course to be pursued to remedy the serious 
deficiency in our educational system, which seems 
to be feasible and unobjectionable to an increas- 
ing number of thoughtful citizens^ is to restore the 
Bible, in whole or perhaps better in part, to a 



THE BIBLE 123 

recognized and influential place in public instruc- 
tion as an unequaled literary standard, as a book 
of superior ethical value, and as inculcating a re- 
ligious motive without which morality has a weak 
and uncertain basis. The Bible cannot be 
charged with being a sectarian book, and there 
can be religion, that is, the acceptance of great, 
universal and unchangeable truths about God, in 
harmony with the deepest instincts of the moral 
nature of man, without sectarianism. A prom- 
inent educator, the Principal of a Baptist Acad- 
emy, has recently declared in a public address, 
" The Bible should be taught in our public schools 
because of its value as history and its value as 
literature. School and college training in the 
humanities covers the history and literature of all 
peoples, except that peculiar people whose reli- 
gious spirit has permeated all art, literature, law 
and government, and is the lasting glory of our 
modern civilization. More than all, the Bible 
should be taught in our public schools for its 
moral and religious influence. Since a nation is 
the aggregation of its individual units, the people 
must be moral and religious as well as intelligent. 
It is the province of the State to teach morals and 
religion as the foundation of its own prosperity. 
States are moral persons, and as such need a 
moral and religious training. No other civilized 



124 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

nation except the United States neglects moral and 
religious instruction In Its educational system. 
The Bible should be taught because this is a 
Christian nation, and the public schools should 
conform to the national character. Such teach- 
ing does not produce a union of Church and 
State, for the Bible is a Book common to both. 
If the State hands over to the Church instruction 
in some truths essential to national well-being, it 
thereby vacates a part of its own authority, and 
really does form a union with the Church. The 
Government should administer Its own affairs in 
training youth to a full understanding of the teach- 
ing of the Bible upon which the nation is founded. 
The Bible is not a sectarian Book but rather a 
foe of all sectarianism." 

This is eminently wise and sane reasoning. 
Many persons who cherished a narrow concep- 
tion of the meaning of the separation of Church 
and State, have been compelled by further reflec- 
tion to accept a broader view, as more in harmony 
with the principles on which our nation was 
founded, and necessary to the continued growth 
and permanent prosperity of the Republic. This 
broader Interpretation is a return to the wisdom 
of the founders. If additional evidence is 
needed. It can be abundantly produced. Hon. 
Thomas S. Grlmke, a distinguished Scholar and 



THE' BIBLE 125 

Philanthropist in the South, declared, " Believing 
as I do that one of the first duties of the Refor- 
mation was to have incorporated the Bible into 
the whole course of instruction, I trust the time 
is not far distant when this principle will be uni- 
versally acknowledged and acted on, that the 
Bible is the only good basis, and the only safe, en- 
during cement, of education." Rev. J. H. Seelye, 
D.D., a well known Biblical scholar, has affirmed 
that " The religion of this country is that of the 
Bible ... It is that which gives character and 
force and stability to our government and laws. 
You might as well take out the heart from the 
body, and suppose that it would be a living body 
still, as to take away the Bible and all its in- 
fluences from our institutions, and expect that 
these will be preserved from decay. He that 
does not see, and will not acknowledge the power 
of the Bible in building up the whole framework 
of American institutions, is either unwise or in- 
sincere." Benjamin Rush, M.D., the honored 
physician and signer of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, said, " In contemplating the politi- 
cal institutions of the United States, I lament that 
we waste so much time and money in punishing 
crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. 
We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect 
the only means of establishing and perpetuating 



126 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

our republican form of government; that is, the 
universal education of our youth in the principles 
of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this 
divine Book, above all others, favors that equal- 
ity among mankind, that respect for just laws, 
and all those sober and frugal virtues which con- 
stitute the soul of republicanism." 

In harmony w^ith the views of this Christian 
physician and statesman is the frankly expressed 
opinion of the agnostic philosopher. Professor 
Huxley — " I may add yet another claim of the 
Bible to the respect and attention of a democratic 
age. . . . Nowhere is the fundamental truth, 
that the welfare of the state, in the long run, de- 
pends upon the righteousness of the citizens, so 
strongly laid down. The Bible is the most dem- 
ocratic book in the world." 

All persons may not be agreed as to the ex- 
tent to which this education should be carried, 
but it would seem that no man interested in the 
moral character of the young, who to-morrow are 
to be heads of families and to hold the reins of 
government, and no lover of the country's wel- 
fare and prosperity, could raise any objection to 
the introduction and use in the public schools of 
such selections from the Scriptures as are appro- 
priate to their special needs, for the cultivation of 
literary style and high thinking, and of those pri- 



THE BIBLE 127 

vate and social virtues which make for noble char- 
acter and responsible citizenship. A collection of 
parts of the Bible, for example, like the Ten Com- 
mandments, the stories of Joseph and of Queen 
Esther, the beautiful Idyl of Ruth, the drama of 
Job, which Alexander Pope said " exceeds beyond 
all comparison the most noble parts of Homer," 
the nineteenth and twenty-third Psalms and many 
others, the sparkling and timeless wisdom of 
Proverbs, several chapters In Isaiah, of which 
Coleridge said " after reading them, Homer and 
Virgil are disgustingly tame, and Milton himself 
barely tolerable," the messages of the old Proph- 
ets which thunder with demands for private 
and social righteousness, the beatitudes of Mat- 
thew and the whole Sermon on the Mount, the 
kingly Life recorded In Mark, the touching par- 
ables of Luke, so natural and yet so divine, the 
fourteenth to the seventeenth chapters of John, 
which take us up Into the third heavens of truth, 
the wonderful story of Paul's life and heroic con- 
secration to the present and eternal welfare of 
men, to whom he confessed himself a debtor for 
the simple reason that he was a possessor of 
riches which they had not, the striking appeal to- 
Integrity and holiness of life in the sixth chapter 
of Romans and the intensely practical lessons for 
the control of conduct which close the book, the 



128 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

unparalleled and immortal panegyric of love, the 
crowning, the supreme grace, in the thirteenth 
chapter of First Corinthians, — But why specify 
more? What a collection of literary gems, of 
moral treatises, of exalted truths expressed in the 
most attractive forms for the instruction, the puri- 
fication, the inspiration of the mind and heart of 
youth ! It is no wonder that Professor Gaussen 
of Geneva should call the Bible, " God's great an- 
them of revelation, in which we have the sublime 
simplicity of John, the argumentative, elliptical, 
soul-stirring energy of Paul, the fervor and 
solemnity of Peter, the poetic grandeur of Isaiah, 
the lyric moods of David, the ingenuous and ma- 
jestic narratives of Moses, the sententious and 
royal wisdom of Solomon." 

The great body of the Bible is composed of 
moral and religious teachings utterly unrelated to 
the controversies which have divided Jew and 
Christian or Christian denominations from each 
other. 

It would seem as If little or no objection could 
be raised from any source to such beautiful and 
wholesome and character-building teachings in 
our public schools. No reasonable man, no 
friend of ethical instruction as having to do with 
the development of character and life, no patri- 
otic citizen anxious that the nation should pre- 



THE BIBLE 129 

serve the high ideals of the fathers, could raise 
any serious opposition to such use. No atheist 
or infidel, if such there be among us, would lift 
his voice against the plan proposed, unless he is 
willing to be regarded as the enemy of virtue, 
of the highest education of the young, and of the 
weal of the Republic. Any opposition from that 
quarter may be regarded as a negligible quantity. 
There are few pronounced atheists or infidels 
among us. Men almost without exception, what- 
ever their belief or unbelief, desire Christian bur- 
ial for their friends and for themselves. It is 
manifestly absurd to compel a community, per- 
meated by a religious faith, to eliminate all ref- 
erence to God and religion from their educational 
system, without which their education would be 
fatally weak, for the sake of two or three pro- 
fessed unbelievers. Such a procedure would be 
the worst kind of tyranny, and would change re- 
ligious liberty into a mockery. An incoming 
atheist would thus have power to pervert and un- 
dermine the educationa^l structure and even 
the civil government of a Christian commun- 
ity, if it had in it any recognition of God. 
No intelligent Roman Catholics could object to 
such use, for such teaching forms a part of their 
professed educational system, and would enforce, 
and in no way conflict with, what is best and holi- 



I30 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

est in their claims, and could be supplemented by 
what Is essential to the perpetuation of their par- 
ticular church organization. The members of the 
Jewish faith could not reasonably oppose the plan, 
for the selections would be In large part taken 
from their most sacred books; and very many 
leaders among them at the present time, while 
they do not accept Jesus as their promised Mes- 
siah, being disposed rather to believe that He was 
carried away by the enthusiasm of his disciples 
Into that belief In reference to Himself and his 
mission (Is it not rather the correct interpreta- 
tion to say that He found It difficult to overcome 
the unbelief of his doubting disciples?) , have come 
to feel a national pride in Jesus as one of their 
own race, and to proclaim Him as a great Jewish 
prophet and teacher, because of his remarkable 
and increasing Influence upon the best thought 
of modern times.* 

Moreover, It Is believed that Protestant Chris- 
tians, under the new and saner Interpretation of 
the meaning of the separation of Church and 
State, viz., that it does not mean the separation of 
religion and the civil government, but only that 

* The following tributes to Jesus are from eminent Jews, and 
are samples of many that might be adduced. 

Mr. Claude Montefiore: "The most important Jew that has 
ever lived, to whom the sinner and the outcast, age after age, 
have owed a great debt of gratitude." 

Dr. Isidore Singer: "I regard Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew 



THE BIBLE 131 

the Church as an organized Institution shall not- 
rival or interfere with or be allowed to control 
the civil powers which themselves are ordained 
by God, will not long be willing to exclude from 
our educational equipment, now actually and 
widely acknowledged to be inadequate, the chief 
source of moral and literary culture, and the one 
instrument above all others that can elevate the 
education of the young to the highest standard of 
efficiency, and preserve the civil institutions, in- 
herited from the wise founders, from weakness 
and decay, viz., the Bible. A general movement 
on the part of the better class of our citizens 

of the Jews, one whom all Jewish people are learning to love. 
We are glad to claim Jesus as one of our own people." 

Dr. Berkowitz: "In Jesus there is the very flowering of 
Judaism, the noblest Rabbi of them all." 

Jacob Schifl: " VV^e Jews honor and revere Jesus of Nazareth 
as we do our own prophets." 

Dr. Friedlander: "The Divine Son of Man," and, "It is the 
glory of Judaism to have produced such a being." 

Dr. Kohler: "The Jew of to-day beholds in Jesus an in- 
spiring ideal of matchless beauty. . . . The very sign of the 
cross has lent a new meaning, a holier pathos to suffering, sick- 
ness and sin. . . . All this, modern Judaism gladly acknowl- 
edges, reclaiming Jesus as one of its greatest sons." 

Dr. Max Nordau : " Jesus is the soul of our soul, flesh of 
our flesh. W^ho, then, could think of excluding Him from the 
people of Israel? St. Peter will remain the only Jew who said 
of the Son of David, I know not the man." 

Rabbi Stephen Wise: " In reappropriating their elder brother, 
Jesus, the Jews of to-day are not urging a single step towards 
Christianity, but accepting the Jewish teaching of Christ, the 
Jew, a teacher, a leader, a prophet, clear-visioned, tenderly 
loving, unselfish, godlike though not uniquely godly, and not 
humanly divine, but divinely human." 



132 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

would easily result in a nation-wide recognition of 
this most valuable educational asset known to 
mankind. 

President Woodrow Wilson, with a prophetic 
insight into national conditions and needs, has re- 
cently given expression to this conviction — 
" There are problems which will need purity and 
an integrity of purpose such as have never been 
called for before in the history of this country. 
I should be afraid to go forward if I did not be- 
lieve that there lay at the foundation of all our 
schooling and all our thought the incomparable 
and unimpeachable Word of God." 

I should be unjust to my deepest convictions, if 
I did not In closing this paper reassert and em- 
phasize my belief in the Bible as the inspired 
Word of God, a divine Revelation indeed, worthy 
of all acceptation, to continue to the end of time 
to make known to mankind the gracious purpose 
and will of God, to show to sinning men how they 
can be reconciled to God through penitence and 
faith In an atoning Saviour, how they can live 
righteously, meet successfully life's high demands, 
bear triumphantly the Ills to which flesh is heir, 
attain unto the stature of perfect manhood, and 
die in the peaceful assurance of a blessed immor- 
tality. It was S. T. Coleridge who said, " I 
know the Bible is inspired, because it finds me at 



THE BIBLE 133 

greater depths of my being than any other book." 
Experience is the test of truth. Millions in the 
past, and millions more in the present have tested 
the power of the religion of Christ to meet the 
deepest needs of the human heart, and have not 
found it to fail. A recent English writer has 
said, " Such, then, is the fourfold deepest need 
of the human heart; God's peace, to lead us into 
a truer and more assured conception both of 
righteousness and sin; God's peace and reconcil- 
iation, to restore us to right relations to Himself 
and to his will; God's love, to dower the heart 
with plenary joy and hope, and a sense of over- 
flowing fullness and sufficiency; and God's 
strength passing into our weakness, to fortify us 
In duty, to uphold us In conflict with evil, and to 
assure us final victory in the battle of a good and 
godly life. A religion that can adapt itself to all 
these moral and spiritual needs of the heart. In 
the sense of recognizing them, meeting them, 
supplying them all to the full, and leaving noth- 
ing wanting to constitute Itself the light and the 
peace and the joy and the strength and the hope 
of all human existence in life and In death, such a 
religion, it Is plain, must as a practical religion be 
absolutely perfect." 

That religion Is the Christian religion. The 



134 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Christian religion is revealed in a Book. That 
Book is the Bible. 

" Father of mercies, in thy Word 

What endless glory shines! 
Forever be thy name adored 

For these celestial lines. 
Oh, may these heavenly pages be 

My ever dear delight! 
And still new beauties may I see, 

And still increasing light! " 

The vivid imagination of Edward Everett 
Hale portrayed the pitiable condition of " a man 
without a country." Only the pen of Inspiration 
can depict the infinitely more deplorable condi- 
tion of a man or a country that should try to live 
without the knowledge of God and his revealed 
will. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN THE NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 

THE nineteenth century is universally re- 
garded as a century of remarkable progress. 
No one questions for an Instant that in discovery, 
in invention, in the arts of living, in the accumula- 
tion of wealth, in all lines of material advance- 
ment and prosperity, the last century surpasses 
any century in the world's history of which we 
have knowledge. All the forces of nature have 
been harnessed to the car of human progress. 
When we think of the limitations of the fathers 
who lived a hundred years ago, the almost entire 
absence of luxuries and even of conveniences 
which we now regard as necessities, of the use of 
steam, of gas, of electricity, the steamship, the 
railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the phrase 
res angusta domi, which was descriptive of gen- 
eral conditions at that time, seems painfully im- 
pressive. We wonder as we try to recall their 
simple, circumscribed life, how the people of that 
generation managed to live and take comfort in 

135 



136 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

life, and we thank God that " the lines have fallen 
to us in pleasant places, and that we have a goodly 
heritage." As someone has truly said, we do 
not now exist, we live. Knowledge has certainly 
" grown from more to more," especially the 
knowledge of the natural sciences and their appli- 
cation to the needs of modern life, and also of 
other peoples and lands. Buried cities have been 
exhumed and brought to light. There are no 
longer hermit nations and dark continents. 

The question may be asked, has the religion of 
the people participated in the progress of the last 
century? Has the church of Jesus Christ, using 
the term as descriptive of the varied visible forms 
of organized Christianity, in any degree lived up 
to its responsibilities? Has it shared in the gen- 
eral activity that has been going on around it? 
What has It to show that Is proof of the divine 
life which It professes to possess, and that will 
make a creditable chapter In Its history? Of 
course, no one can claim that the religion of the 
people has been as active, as aggressive, and as 
abundant In achievement as It might have been, 
and ought to have been, that the Christian church 
has made the progress which with God's help was 
possible, and has molded the Ideals, and minis- 
tered to the needs, and lifted the life of the people 
as a conscientious fidelity to its divine commission 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 137 

would have enabled It to do. All human works 
are marked by imperfection. Whatever man's 
hand touches is doomed to weakness. No man 
and no church ever attains In this world unto its 
Ideal of life and service. " Our own hearts con- 
demn us." 

But this should not prevent us from recognizing 
the achievements of the past, and thanking God 
for whatever of success and prosperity has been 
secured. There Is a tendency at the present time 
to speak disparagingly of the past, to Ignore what 
tlie church has accomplished, to criticise sharply, 
even censoriously, its spirit and methods, and even 
Its ideals and doctrinal standards, for the purpose. 
It may be hoped, of arousing It to new zeal, in- 
creasing Its activity and usefulness, and giving to 
It a broader vision of Its Christ-given mission and 
the means and methods by which it Is to be ac- 
complished. But a wise father is wont to com- 
mend his son for what he has tried to do well, If 
he desires to encourage him to do better. He 
who has only words of severe and unrighteous 
condemnation for past effort and its measure of 
success, is little likely to stimulate to Increased 
effort and fidelity. Much of the sharp and un- 
pardonable criticism which Is being poured upon 
the Christian church to-day grows out of a pro- 
found Ignorance of Its spirit and efforts, Its In- 



138 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

fluence and progress, or of a bitter hostility to it 
as a divine institution. Moreover, for a man to 
blind his eyes to the luminous record of the 
church's past achievements and its present moral 
and spiritual power in the world, is to refuse to 
honor God, who by his indwelling and outwork- 
ing Spirit has made it a mighty leaven for the 
regeneration of individual life and the purifica- 
tion a,nd improvement of social customs and con- 
ditions. When all the facts are remembered, it 
may be said without fear of successful contradic- 
tion that the nineteenth century of the Christian 
era has been unequaled in moral and spiritual 
achievement, as well as in material progress, by 
any century that has preceded it, that the church 
of Christ in activity, in aggressiveness, in numer- 
ical growth and in its moral standards, has come 
nearer to fulfilling the divine purpose and the lofty 
ideals of its Founder than at any period, at least 
since the third century. Prof. Charles R. Erd- 
man of the Princeton Theological Seminary 
says, " The last century of Christian history has 
been characterized by notable achievements in var- 
ious spheres of religious thought and endeavor. 
It has been an era of great activity in Biblical and 
theological science, of marked development in 
philanthropic and social service, of unequaled 
progress In evangelical and missionary work. AH 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 139 

these activities have been manifestations of the 
spiritual life of the church. In its essence this 
life has been the same in all ages, however varied 
may have been its providential expressions and em- 
bodiments." 

Take for instance its obedience to Christ's final 
commission to " make disciples of all nations." 
The last century has been preeminently the mis- 
sionary century. At its beginning the church 
which, as a whole, had been sleeping, awoke to.^a 
new appreciation of Christ and spiritual religion, 
and a new sense of responsibility for the nations 
that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. 
Thousands of men and women have heard the 
call of God and have gone forth to labor and to 
die that they might bear witness to Him who gave 
his life for the life of the world, and billions of 
dollars have been laid upon God's altar for their 
sending and their support. As the result of this 
'heroic consecration and willing sacrifice, within 
the hundred years all the great heathen nations 
have been visited, Christianity has laid permanent 
foundations In all lands, churches and schools 
and hospitals have been established, the Word 
of God has been translated into hundreds of 
tongues, an efficient native ministry has been 
raised up and educated, and already millions have 
been converted and other millions have been 



140 THINKING GOD^S THOUGHTS 

brought under the influence of the Gospel of 
Christ. 

It has been stated that ^' There have been three 
times as many adherents added to Christianity 
during the last century as during the first sixteen 
centuries of its existence. Only thirty-six per 
cent, of the world's population were governed by 
Christians in 1786, now more than fifty-five per 
cent. In 300 years Christian Powers have in- 
creased the territory under their rule from seven 
per cent, of the world's surface to eighty-two per 
cent. In view of these figures we feel that not 
only is Christian faith not on the decline, but that 
it is growing with great rapidity, and that Dr. 
Dorchester has truly expressed it when he said, 
'' No intelligent person standing in the light of the 
last four centuries and beholding the great re- 
ligious movements of this age, can doubt that 
Christianity is advancing. Every year it is rob- 
ing itself with new effulgence and pouring its 
blessed illumination upon new millions of earth's 
population." 

The hoary religious systems of the far East 
are being rapidly undermined by the Gospel of 
Christ; their crude moralities are giving place to 
the purer ethics of Christianity; and in one in- 
stance, in the largest and most conspicuous na- 
tion of all, the form of government has yielded 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 141 

under practically Christian leadership to the en- 
lightening influence of the advanced Christian 
civilization of the West. An English correspond- 
ent after a prolonged visit to China, declared, 
'' The missionaries are the men who began the 
work of av/akening China. . . . Their work is 
not to be measured by their enrolled converts. 
. . . They have been not only the teachers of 
religion, but the advance agents of civilization." 
The leaven of the one true religion has been in- 
troduced, and even though the aid of Christian 
lands should now be withheld, the spiritual leaven 
of revealed and transforming truth would un- 
doubtedly go on working until the whole lump of 
heathenism is leavened. Sir Monier Monier- 
Williams affirmed thirty years ago that, " The 
present condition of India seems very similar to 
that of the Roman Empire before the coming of 
Christ. A complete disintegration of ancient 
faiths is in progress In the upper strata of society. 
Most of the ablest thinkers become pure Theists 
or Unitarians. In almost every large town there 
is a Samaj or society of such men, whose creed 
would be well expressed by the first part of the 
first article of the Church of England." And 
Cheshub Chunder Sen has asserted that " Buddha 
no longer rules in India but Jesus Christ." 

A Professor In one of the Universities of Japan 



1 42 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

recently declared, '* No man can estimate the con- 
tribution which Christianity has made to Japan. 
. . . Japan has taken the best of everything found 
in Western civilization, and she must take the best 
in religion." 

As showing the present missionary activity an 
American journal recently published the follow- 
ing facts — *' At the close of the year 1911, the 
total missionary funds raised by the various Pro- 
testant missionary organizations here and abroad 
for work in heathen lands were $25,297,074.00. 
With this magnificent annual offering, support 
was furnished for 22,058 white missionaries and 
'88,542 native helpers, teachers, pastors, Bible 
women and evangelists, at 49,579 different mis- 
sionary stations in India, Africa, Japan, China, 
Burma, Siam, the Arctic, South America and 
Polynesia. The missions had an enrolled list of 
45^75'454 adherents professing Christian belief, 
of whom 2,304,308 were communicants. In the 
same year there were 1,477,049 children in the 
various missionary schools. The United States 
contributed nearly one-half of the total fund for 
conducting the whole work, having raised last year 
$12,290,005.00 for missions.'* 

The work which has been accomplished, great 
as it is, is not so great a work by a vast deal as 
would have been achieved, if every disciple of 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 143 

Christ had been fully consecrated and every power 
had been laid upon the altar of service for the 
world's Redeemer; but it bears witness to the 
commendable missionary spirit of the church which 
has characterized the nineteenth century. 

It should be added (what of course was Inevi- 
table) that the home missionary spirit in Christian 
lands has moved on with equal and even greater 
pace during this period, and has been rewarded 
with splendid results. If we confine our obser- 
vation to our own land, with which we are most 
familiar, we find that every evangelical denomina- 
tion has been stirred to increasing activity, and 
has organized vigorous missionary societies, city, 
state, and national, ministering indiscriminately 
to the needy native and foreign populations, car- 
ing for the aboriginal tribes which still remain, 
the native born settlers who are pushing Westward 
the course of empire, the destitute freedmen of the 
south, and the swelling tides of immigrant 
population that are flooding our cities and sweep- 
ing into the Western prairies. The church was 
never so responsive as it is to-day to the appeal 
of the destitute rural sections of our country and 
the more Imperative challenge of the city. It seeks 
to embrace In the ever widening scope of its ac- 
tivity all conditions of people, all localities and all 
nationalities, and God's blessing has been, and 



144 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

still is, on it all. The Baptist denomination in 
this country may serve as an illustration of growth 
as well as of service. At the beginning of the 
nineteenth century it numbered 75,000 or 80,000 
members; at the end of the nineteenth century the 
number of communicants had swollen to more 
than five millions. The churches of Christ have 
not been wholly indifferent to their solemn duty 
and privilege, and surely God has given the in- 
crease. Great spiritual awakenings in response 
to prayer and earnest effort have been expe- 
rienced at frequent intervals, and Pentecost has 
been repeated again and again. While the 
churches humble themselves before God in view 
of the fact that they have not done more, may 
they not also praise Him that He has enabled 
them to do so much, and especially for the 
strengthening purpose increasingly manifest to go 
forward to the conquest of this land and of all 
lands for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? 

The nineteenth century has been also the great 
educational century in this country. In the year 
1800 there were but few colleges and institu- 
tions for higher education among us, and those 
were poorly endowed. No college had yet been 
founded for young women. At the present time 
almost every State has a college of its own. Some 
of them have several colleges representing dif- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 145 

ferent denominations of Christians. Separate 
colleges for women are numerous, and doors open 
to both sexes are found from ocean to ocean. 
The little faculty of a half dozen professors has 
grown In many instances to hundreds, and the 
meager endowments now amount to hundreds of 
millions of dollars. The most of these Institu- 
tions, all except the State Institutions, have been 
founded, and supported, and endowed by private 
benevolence, a benevolence which has been born 
of prayer and kindled In the churches of Jesus 
Christ, Christian men and women contributing 
often out of their poverty that knowledge may be 
placed within the reach of all the youth of the 
land, and that an educated ministry may be raised 
up to be the leaders of our churches and guides 
of the people in the way of true wisdom. Some 
gifts for educational purposes In the latter part of 
the century have been little less than fabulous, and 
are without a pafallel In the history of the world. 
The motto of Harvard University, the oldest of 
them all, Christo et Ecclesiae, may be truthfully 
inscribed over every college gateway, as expres- 
sive of the Christian spirit and purpose of Its 
founders. Surely a Christianity which has 
brought forth such rich and abundant fruit has ac- 
complished something for the enlightenment of 
mankind, and is worthy of grateful recognition 



146 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

as one of the potent forces in our advancing civili- 
zation. 

That eminent litterateur, Bliss Perry, says, 
** American faith in education, as all the world 
knows, has from the beginning gone hand in hand 
with faith in religion ; the school-house was almost 
as sacred a symbol as the meeting-house; and the 
munificence of American private benefactions to 
the cause of education furnishes to-day one of the 
most striking instances of idealism in the history 
of civilization." 

It should be remembered that even the State 
colleges and universities which have been founded 
and are supported by public funds, have been 
created by an appreciation of the value and neces- 
sity of higher education for the welfare and prog- 
ress of the people, which has been fostered by 
the churches of Jesus Christ. President James B. 
Angell says, in *' Selected Addresses," " For the 
most part the direction of education has been in 
the hands of the church. Now whatever criti- 
cism may be made upon the church through these 
eighteen centuries, she has with impartial hand 
held wide open to men, of high and of low degree 
alike, the gates of generous learning. She has 
encouraged and persuaded the rich to endow her 
schools and colleges and universities, so that the 
instruction might be almost, if not entirely, free. 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 147 

She has taught them to found scholarships, which 
would enable the poorest boy to spend the best 
years of his youth and manhood in the still air of 
delightful study." He might have added, should 
a Professor in a college so far forget himself as 
to speak disparagingly of the Christian church, 
he is ungratefully condemning the generous bene- 
factor to which he is indebted for his education, 
his living and his opportunity. 

But our churches through their inspired rep- 
resentatives have not only been In most wise and 
generous ways seeking to overcome the ignorance 
of the world, but they have been faithfully and 
sympathetically ministering to the want, the sor- 
row and the misery of the world which they have 
seen about them, and are doing it to-day with an 
increasing zeal and a far reaching activity. The 
nineteenth century may be characterized as par 
excellence the philanthropic century. There never 
was a time when the disciples of Christ followed 
more closely or In greater numbers In the foot- 
steps of their divine Master, who ever went about 
doing good, than during these recent years. 
There never was a time when the practical sympa- 
thy of Christ found more beautiful or abundant 
illustrations than in our day. It Is true, painfully 
true, that selfishness and forgetfulness and cold- 
ness still live In too many hearts which profess to 



148 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

have been warmed by the love of the Saviour. 
But the church as a whole has proved itself to be 
the friend of the poor, the sick, the suffering, the 
wandering, the needy of all classes and conditions, 
and its members have gone forth to found not 
only institutions of learning, but institutions of 
charity and philanthropy of every name, hospi- 
tals, asylums, homes for the aged, the orphan, 
the friendless and the wayward. All those whom 
the heathen and Christless world has neglected and 
abandoned, the Christian church has adopted as 
its peculiar care. These are some of the things 
that distinguish our Christian civilization and 
make it Christian. 

A well known English writer has truthfully 
said, " All that we call modern civilization in a 
sense which deserves the name, is the visible ex- 
pression of the transforming power of the Gos- 
pel." 

Dr. Lyman Abbott has recently declared, in 
*' My Fifty Years as a Minister," " Looking back 
upon the history of the church or abroad upon its 
present work, the church is seen as an inspiration 
to practical helpfulness. The church was the 
first distributor of charity to the poor; the first 
builder of hospitals and asylums; the first minister 
to the sick and suffering; the first founder of 
schools for the education of the common people. 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 149 

And it Is still. It is the church which has sent 
doctors and teachers to foreign lands; the church 
which has Introduced medicine and surgery into 
China, India, Africa; the church which has es- 
tablished, first, schools for the primary education 
of the children, and then, colleges for the higher 
education of adults, in lands where there was either 
no educational system, as In India, or none which 
really educated, as in China. It was to the church 
that the army looked In the Civil War for the es- 
tablishment and maintenance of the Christian and 
Sanitary Commissions; it was to the church that, 
after great battles, calls were sent for bandages, 
medicines, nurses, doctors and delicacies for the 
hospitals. 

That the world agrees with me in thinking that 
the churches are springs of practical benevolence 
is indicated by the fact that the pastor of every 
town and city church of any considerable size gets 
every^ month, often two or three times a month 
(and often two or three times a week) appeals for 
help for some practical benevolence or some moral 
reform." 

And not only by organized institutions of Chris- 
tian charity, but by a quiet personal ministry of 
which every pastor knows, Christian men and 
women are busy performing deeds of mercy, help- 
fulness and love. There are undoubtedly In- 



ISO THINKING GOD^S THOUGHTS 

stances of suffering which do not come to the eye 
of the Christian public, and distressing cries which 
reach no ear. There are conditions which can 
be changed and improved only by wise and author- 
itative legislation, which can be brought about only 
by slow processes. But the great body of the 
church, in spite of some unworthy exceptions, are 
animated to a good degree by the spirit of Christ, 
or at least by a sincere purpose to walk worthy of 
their high calling. It is this that furnishes the 
basis for the hope that as the religion of Jesus con- 
trols the spirit and the conduct of men, there will 
be realized on earth the divine ideal of human 
brotherhood. 

An American professor and writer on Socialism 
is reported to have said in an address before a 
Christian Convention, " Throughout Western 
Christendom there has been a long struggle of the 
people towards political liberty and social brother- 
hood. It was often blind, siAful, brutal, as every 
great movement of humanity has always been. 
Yet God was in it. But the churches that exist 
for the very purpose of establishing the reign of 
justice, peace and brotherhood have with fatal 
persistence ranged themselves on the other side. 
This is the great moral stumbling block beside 
which all intellectual difficulties of belief in Chris- 
tian doctrine are insignificant. It has produced 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 151 

more alienation from religion than all other causes 
combined." If this accusation means or includes 
Christendom in this Western hemisphere it is 
utterly without foundation. Here social brother- 
hood has to a large degree accompanied political 
liberty. The churches of the largest denomina- 
tions in the United States are practically social 
democracies. Their members to a very large ex- 
tent belong to the humbler walks in life, to the 
laboring classes, or are those who have limited in- 
comes. There are few millionaires or semi-mil- 
lionaires among them, and those are not the in- 
heritors of large unearned properties, but such as 
have come up from the lower strata of society, 
and by industry, economy, thrift and, for the most 
part, honest toil and enterprise have accumulated 
what they possess. It can be asserted confidently 
that the sympathies of the churches are uniformly 
with the laboring classes, when they observe the 
J laws of the land and the rights of others, and do 
not " blindly, sinfully, brutally " endanger the 
peace and stability of the social order. Anything 
else is inconceivable, for the members of the 
churches are largely the laboring classes. 

There is sometimes manifested an unjust and 
unreasonable antagonism against wealth and those 
who possess it, without which all commerce and 
industry and large philanthropy and missionary 



152 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

enterprise would be impossible, and society would 
resolve itself into a lifeless and unprogressive 
agrarianism. We are living in a time of extrav- 
agant, not to say insane assertions. Some would- 
be leaders in this social crisis seem to care not so 
much to instruct wisely and to generate calmness 
of judgment, as to arouse unrest and passion and 
class-hostility. A Christian minister who had 
abandoned the pulpit for the socialist's platform, 
publicly declared that " Every poor man is a 
robbed man," an assertion as absurd and inde- 
fensible as it is criminal and dangerous. Poverty 
is often the result of incompetence, folly or waste- 
ful dissipation. A. C. Benson is authority for the 
following incident in the life of Charles Kingsley. 
He was once traveling in the United States and 
met a newspaper editor who said to him, " Mr. 
Kingsley, I hear you are a democrat. Well, so 
am I. My motto is, Whenever you see a head 
above the crowd, hit it." "' Good heavens! " said 
Kingsley, commenting upon the remark, " what a 
ghastly conception of human equality, to attempt, 
not to raise everyone to the level of the best, but 
to boycott all force, all originality, all nobility, 
and to reduce all to a dead level! If that is de- 
mocracy, I am no democrat." That pugilistic edi- 
tor seems to have a large following, all of whom 
do not occupy editors' chairs ; whose conception of 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 153 

democracy is the overthrow of the prosperous In 
order to exalt the less favored, whose method is a 
leveling down instead of a leveling up, and who 
mistake violent hostility against the rich for gen- 
uine and helpful sympathy for the poor. Unless 
there can be a wiser spirit introduced into the 
discussion of social questions, and the use of more 
temperate and saner language, the discussion will 
not only be utterly futile of good, but will lead to 
widespread social disaster. Some teachers and 
preachers who profess to be the friends of the 
church and the social order, are proving themselves 
to be the worst enemies of both by their unwar- 
ranted and incendiary language. They are blind 
leaders of the blind, aye, worse, they are playing 
with the inflammable passions of men, and Inciting 
to riot and anarchy. What is needed is not aliena- 
tion and distrust and enmity, but mutual under- 
standing and sympathy and good will. 

A recent writer, himself a Christian teacher, 
discussing the church and socialism, says, " The 
church is to-day in large part a collection of people 
who thank God that they are not as others — • 
even as this socialist ! The indifferent Priest and 
the hard hearted Levite still throng the highways, 
but to many a man who has fallen among robbers, 
and has been bruised and beaten and left half 
dead, no good Samaritan comes with his oil and 



154 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

wine. The church is too busy holding conven- 
tions and saving the heathen to attend to such 
small matters at its doors." Such language com- 
ing from the pen of an infidel and a bitter and 
mentally and morally unbalanced socialist would 
not be surprising, for he hates both the church and 
missions to the heathen. But a sober second 
thought on the part of the author and a better 
acquaintance with the immense and increasing ac- 
tivity on the part of many of our churches In 
ministering " oil and wine " would have prevented 
such a wholesale and unjust criticism. Any candid 
survey of the philanthropic and charitable move- 
ments of the last century, and an acquaintance with 
the work of practical sympathy In which our 
churches are constantly engaged will convince any 
man that this has been a prominent characteristic 
of the visible life of Christianity. Our Young 
Men's Christian Associations and Young Women's 
Christian Associations, with all their excellent and 
far reaching service, have been generated by the 
teaching of the Christian pulpit, and have been 
sustained and made efficient by the presence, the 
prayers, and the devotion of the men and women 
of the churches. Take away that presence, and 
those prayers, and that devotion, and their fine 
buildings, expensively equipped, erected in every 
city, would quickly be in the market for sale; in- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 155 

deed without these they would never have been 
built. The truth is, that all these existing philan- 
thropies and charities which are the glory of our 
modern civilization, organizations and societies 
of every name for the relief of suffering and for 
moral prevention, are simply so many forms of 
church-activity. The church of Jesus Christ with 
the religion which it embodies and the life which 
it imparts, is the inspiring and prolific mother of 
them all. To withhold from the church its just 
dues is as culpable as it is to bring false charges 
against it. 

Professor William Adams Brown of the Union 
Theological Seminary states a fact too little recog- 
nized, when he says, " Long before our modern 
economists had begun to tell us of the dependence 
of vice upon an unfavorable social environment, 
Christian missionaries had established in the slums 
of our great cities centers of helpfulness and sym- 
pathy which were a practical demonstration of this 
truth . . . And to the darkest and most destitute 
regions of the earth the hospital, the workshop 
and the school have been carried by men and 
women who have been sustained in the sacrifice 
and renunciation which the task required, by their 
faith that the little they were able to do to help 
men here was so much contribution towards pre- 
paring them for an eternal destiny." Again he 



156 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

says, " There are many persons to-day who are 
ready to recognize the beneficent work done by 
foreign missionaries for the social welfare of the 
peoples among whom they have been working, 
who have no sympathy with the religious motives 
which animate them. Why, they ask, can we not 
have the hospital and the school without the doc- 
trines that go with them? They forget that it is 
faith in the realities which the doctrines express, 
which alone has made the missionary enterprise 
possible. Had it not been for the belief that man 
is an immortal spirit, capable of communion with 
God and meant for fellowship with Him through 
all eternity, we should have had no Livingstone 
or Moffat or Paton." 

Possibly there may be here and there an exclu- 
sive, self-centered, heartless and unspiritual 
church, blind to the great verities of its professed 
faith, which is irresponsive to the appeal of a lost 
world, and holds himself aloof from the common 
tide of human life which goes moaning and sob- 
bing by. But the general spirit of the followers 
of the divine Son of Man has been: 

" Let me live in my house by the side of the road, 
And be a friend to man." 

The appeal of a needy and distressed humanity 
has been invariably to the Christian community, 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 157 

and has not been wont to be refused when relief 
was possible. It was the dictate of the plainest 
wisdom, confirmed by the result of past experience, 
that prompted the friends of the ancient cripple 
to carry him daily at the hour of prayer, and lay 
him by the Beautiful Gate of the temple, where the 
throngs of worshipers would pass to and fro. 
It is the religiously inclined in whose bosoms the 
divine sympathy throbs. The friends of a suf- 
fering Christ are uniformly the friends of a suffer- 
ing humanity. 

But what shall be said of the influence of the 
Christian church and its teaching during the last 
century upon public and private morals? No one 
who is familiar with the ethical ideals of Jesus 
will question their pure and exalted character and 
their insistent demand for righteousness in per- 
sonal character and in all human conduct and re- 
lations. All ethical systems of acknowledged 
worth are based upon the teachings of Christ. 
Did the church of the nineteenth century enforce 
those teachings as part of its divine message, or 
was the pulpit ministration such as to obscure their 
importance and weaken their power? In other 
words was the evangelicanism of the fathers non- 
ethical? This question is raised by reason of the 
supposed contrast between the preaching of the 
past and the preaching of the present. Formerly, 



158 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

it is said, the emphasis was laid upon doctrine, 
while now it is laid upon practice, formerly upon 
creed and now upon life. 

This supposed contrast is largely imaginary, 
and grows out of an entire misapprehension of 
the facts. The fathers did preach doctrine, but 
rarely or never as an end in itself. It was uni- 
formly as a means to fullness and integrity of life. 
It would be easy to show from their voluminous 
sermons which have been preserved, with their 
numerous inferences, applications, improvements 
and practical lessons that they were not wont to 
disconnect truth from life, doctrine from personal 
obedience and righteousness. The following clear 
and distinct utterance was made as long ago as 
1811 at the meeting of the Warren Baptist Asso- 
ciation for that year, and may be accepted as an 
illustration of the all-round preaching which in 
a large degree characterized the century. The 
italics are the author's. " But while the Scriptures 
enjoin the absolute necessity of faith unfeigned, 
with no less decision do they affirm that those who 
believe must be careful to maintain good works. 
True faith always works by love and purifies the 
heart. Nothing can be adapted more effectually 
to produce the fruits of righteousness than a 
hearty belief of the truth exhibited in the Bible. 
The Gospel is a grand expedient in which the wis- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 159 

dom and glory of God are displayed in recovering 
men from the dominion of sin. No person can 
have more real religion than he has practical re- 
ligion. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, 
and he only. The grace of God which bringeth 
salvation, teaches its possessors to deny ungodli- 
ness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, right- 
eously and godly In this present evil world . . . 
Faith in Christ as the root, and obedience to his 
commands as the branches, constitute the true 
plant of our Heavenly Father's planting." 

Christ taught, " You shall know the truth and 
the truth shall make you free," not only free from 
error and superstition, but free from the power 
and dominion of sin. Christ prayed for his dis- 
ciples in his last recorded prayer, " Sanctify them 
by the truth ; thy word is truth." The fathers took 
Christ at his word, believing that the truth of 
Christ, the doctrine of Christ, alone had renewing 
and sanctifying power. It was not the creed ac- 
cepted merely by the intellect, but the creed 
wrought into the life, that they had in view. Be- 
lievers were to be " living epistles." By their 
fruits they should be known and judged. If they 
preached the necessity of faith in Christ as a di- 
vine Saviour, it was because He would save his 
people from their sins, from their power as well as 
their penalty. If they held up Christ on the cross 



i6o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

in full atonement, they joined believers in Christ 
with Him in his crucifixion, crying " How shall we 
who are dead to sin live any longer therein?" 
If they preached the virgin birth of Christ, they 
proclaimed the absolute necessity of a new birth 
into a spiritual life in order to see the kingdom of 
God. If they preached the resurrection of Christ 
as the crowning article in the Christian faith, it 
was that men might experience the moral power 
of that resurrection, and rise to newness of being. 
If they preached the doctrine of justification by 
faith, they were quick to say, while it is your faith 
in Christ that justifies you before God, it is your 
righteous and obedient life that will justify your 
faith before God and men. If they preached 
much of Heaven and its eternal glories, it was be- 
cause they knew that no man can live this life as 
he ought, without feeling the uplifting and sanc- 
tifying power of the world to come constantly on 
his soul. 

They put first things first, the cause before the 
effect, the prescribed means before the desired end. 
They did emphasize doctrine that they might se- 
cure life. They did emphasize doctrine, because to 
ignore it was fatal to life. Christ said, " The words 
that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are 
life." And so they spoke them unto men, pregnant 
with divine doctrine, throbbing with divine life, 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST i6i 

that they might have here and now the true and 
abundant life which Christ came to give. Well 
will it be for the church and the ministry of to-day 
and to-morrow and the next day, If they follow the 
examples of the fathers, which brought large in- 
crease to the people of God and crowned the 
century with gracious revivals. A leader in the 
recent *' men and religion forward movement " 
declared that if his denomination, the Congrega- 
tionalist, did not lay greater emphasis upon the 
soul's conversion by the Spirit and truth of God, 
it would soon die out. The continued existence 
of Christian churches depends upon the continued 
proclamation of revealed truth and the continued 
Insistence upon a vital spiritual experience, which 
consists in the soul's communion with God through 
a personal faith In the crucified and risen Christ. 
Without these there may be social clubs, fraternal 
orders, benevolent societies, philanthropic organi- 
zations, but Christian churches after the New Tes- 
tament pattern are doomed to extinction. Chris- 
tianity Is doctrine as well as life, and all permanent 
Christian life must have its roots In the unchang- 
ing truth of Christ. Men will soon cease to talk 
about " applied Christianity," unless they con- 
tinue to hold fast to a definite, positive Christian- 
ity which they are to apply. 

Doctrinal preaching has always produced moral 



i62 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

results. Froude in his essay of " Calvinism '' de- 
clared (and he cannot be charged with undue 
prejudice) that Calvinism produced character, and 
that whatever of moral fiber the English and 
Scotch people possessed was due to the Puritan 
preaching of Calvinistic doctrine. Froude's 
exact language is, " Whatever exists at this mo- 
ment in England and Scotland of conscientious 
fear of doing evil is the remnant of the convic- 
tions which were branded by the Calvinists into 
the people's hearts." Dr. William E. Griffis de- 
clares, '' Calvinism with its democratic spirit, in- 
tense love of liberty, high ideals, and austere 
morals was mighty in shaping the minds of the 
men who made the Dutch Republic, the English 
Commonwealth, New England and the Scotland 
and North Ireland of public schools and an edu- 
cated peasantry." The earlier and later testimony 
of historians is in exact accord, and voices the un- 
varying consensus of opinion. 

In a review of a volume entitled '' Nine Great 
Preachers," by Dr. A. H. Currier, beginning with 
Chrysostom and ending with Phillips Brooks, four 
of whom are well within the memory of living 
men, viz., Robertson, Beecher, Maclaren and 
Brooks, it is said, " The boldness with which all 
these preachers denounced the sins of their times 
is strikingly apparent in these biographies; while 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 163 

the elevated standard of morality which they pro- 
claimed shows them all, and the class to which 
they belong, to be lineal descendants of the great 
lawgiver of Israel, who by divine sanctions en- 
forced a morality far higher than any which can 
be obtained by mere legal enactments." Certainly 
in the preaching of the great preachers of the 
church doctrine and ethics have not been di- 
vorced. 

The results of doctrinal preaching have been 
seen in a positive as well as negative morality. 
The nineteenth century revealed in several respects 
a remarkable progress in moral sentiment in our 
country. The system of human slavery, which 
had rested like a menacing curse upon the land, 
and came near dismembering the nation, went 
down, not so much by reason of the demand of the 
Civil War (that was only the providential occa- 
sion) as before the uprising and onward march of 
aroused moral sentiment. The abolitionists had 
their mission, but the growing sense of the injustice 
and wrong of the system, felt by many Christians 
in the South as well as the North, voiced in many 
Christian pulpits, journals and conventions, was 
at last victorious, and the abnormal institution 
disappeared forever from our free land. 

Dr. Lyman Abbott, to quote again from his 
Reminiscences which refer to the history of both 



1 64 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

the temperance and the slavery agitations, says, 
" That the church has sometimes been laggard in 
moral reform movements is true; but it is not 
true, as Is sometimes affirmed, that it has been in- 
different. Dr. Lyman Beecher's ' Six Sermons on 
Temperance ' were among the causes which 
brought about the great temperance movement in 
this country. There was not in the anti-slavery 
reform, from any body of lawyers, doctors, mer- 
chants or scientists, any utterances analogous to 
the petition signed by three thousand clergymen of 
New England against the Nebraska Bill, allowing 
the extension of slavery." These are specimen 
Illustrations of moral sentiment which was finding 
expression In pulpit and pew constantly during 
the last century. 

As early as 1787 the Warren Baptist Associa- 
tion which embraced the Baptist churches through- 
out New England, passed a resolution condemning 
the traffic In slaves. This is thought to be the 
earliest of many denunciations of slavery by re- 
ligious conventions In the North. During the first 
half of the last century many influential citizens 
of the South openly declared the system of slavery 
to be " unjust," " unchristian," " cruel," " dis- 
graceful," " diabolical," " a black stain," '' a ter- 
rible calamity," " a moral and political evil," " an 
evil greater to the master than to the slave." 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 165 

This was especially true of prominent leaders In 
Virginia. In the year 1845 the Baptist General 
Convention for Foreign Missions, having been 
one body for thirty-one years, was torn asunder, 
making two bodies, a Northern and a Southern, 
because the Appointing Board resident In the 
North, refused In response to an Inquiry from the 
Alabama Baptist Convention, to appoint slave- 
owners as missionaries, " lest It become respon- 
sible for an institution which It could not with good 
conscience sanction." The Civil War brought de- 
struction to the system, triumph in a way little 
expected to the vigorous moral sense of the peo- 
ple, and Immortal glory to the name of Abraham 
Lincoln; and In due time came healing and a more 
permanent union to the dismembered denomina- 
tions of Christians. Now no sane man Is so insen- 
sible to the demands of justice and the Inalienable 
rights of humanity as to defend the ancient wrong. 
The practice of gambling by lottery which pre- 
vailed so extensively a hundred years ago, and was 
resorted to without a blush, by the authorization 
of legislative enactment. In works of public im- 
provement. In securing funds for the erection of 
public buildings and even Christian sanctuaries, 
is forever ostracized by reason of the pronounced 
condemnation of educated Christian sentiment. In 
some forms gambling still survives, and though 



1 66 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

sometimes protected by official corruption, It Is 
under the ban of statutory condemnation like other 
crimes and vices, and lives In the dark, shrinking 
from discovery and criminal prosecution. 

The following statute was passed by the Legis- 
lature of the State of New York, April 13, 18 14: 

"An Act instituting a lottery for the promotion of literature 
and for other purposes. 

Whereas well-regulated seminaries of learning are of im- 
mense importance to every country and tend especially, by the 
diflfusion of science and the promotion of morals, to defend and 
perpetuate the liberties of a free state, 

Therefore 

I. Be it enacted by the people of the State of New York, 
represented in Senate and Assembly, that there shall be raised 
by lottery, in successive classes, a sum equal in amount to the 
several appropriations made by this act. 

$100,000.00 for the benefit of Union College. 

$ 40,000.00 for the benefit of Hamilton College. 

$ 40,000.00 for the benefit of Asbury African Church 
in the City of New York to pay a mort- 
gage and establish a school. 

$ 30,000.00 for the benefit of the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, and certain provisions for 
the benefit of Columbia College. 

See Elihu Root's Yale Lectures on "The Citizen's Part in 
Government," pp. 105, 106. 

The Intemperance that was so rife even In 
Christian circles In former days, so that no build- 
ing could be framed, not even a college or a 
church, and no day's work could be done In field 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 167 

or shop, without the use of intoxicating liquor, and 
hospitality even to a clergyman was not complete 
unless It was furnished, Is now a mark of moral 
degeneracy, and more and more by constantly in- 
creasing public sentiment restrictive laws are being 
placed upon our statute books in reference to Its 
manufacture and sale. Rev. William Goodell, 
D.D., an honored missionary of the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to 
Constantinople, describes in his '^ Memoirs " the 
social conditions which prevailed in his boyhood in 
the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
An eminent clergyman consulted a physician in 
great perplexity of mind. In his pastoral work 
as he visited the sick and the dying, comforted 
mourners, prayed with the aged and guided in- 
quirers, wherever he called on these sacred er- 
rands liquor was offered to him, which In order 
not to give offense he felt bound to take. After 
a few calls " his head was Invariably affected, so 
that he found himself in dapger of saying or do- 
ing some foolish thing. Could the doctor pre- 
scribe something for him to take in such frequent 
emergencies?" The doctor's only prescription 
was, when his head was thus affected, the clergy- 
man should go home while he was still able to 
walk, and remain until the dizziness had passed 
away. " The idea of total abstinence seems not 



1 68 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

to have entered the mind of either of them. 
That he must drink was taken for granted, or give 
unpardonable offense. In those days everybody 
drank, old and young, rich and poor, male and 
female." Dr. Goodell relates another incident. 
In which he himself, then a boy, had a prominent 
part. A godly man, who like his own godly par- 
ents believed In the Assembly's Catechism, together 
with " the reasons annexed to the whole Ten Com- 
mandments " was wont to call at his home " to 
confer with his parents about the prophecies in 
general and the millennium In particular," and the 
great missionary enterprise which was then be- 
ginning to engage the thoughts of Christians. No 
conference ever closed without glasses of toddy 
or mugs of flip, varying according to the season, 
" the sugar at the bottom being always reserved 
for the longing palates of the children." On one 
occasion when the godly man called, the parents 
were absent, and Dr. Goodell says, " I felt it be- 
came me as the oldest son of the family to treat 
the servant of the Lord with all due respect.'^ He 
therefore undertook to make for this good man 
the customary glass of toddy. " On tasting it I 
thought it too strong and put In more water with 
sugar to match. Tasting it again I thought it was 
too weak and too sweet, and therefore made an- 
other change and still another." And so he con- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 169 

tinued tasting and changing, and changing and 
tasting until he had prepared a large bowl full, 
and had lost all idea of how it ought to taste. 
The good man drank a part, and gave the children 
his blessing, advising them to put the remainder 
of the liquor aside until their parents returned. 
They were ashamed to have their parents come 
home and see what remained, and to throw any 
of " the good creature " away would be quite 
wicked, and so they undertook to reduce the quan- 
tity remaining, and drank until, as the doctor 
says euphemistically, " their heads turned around." 
He adds *' I presume that the children of to-day 
would know a more excellent way of honoring the 
servants of the Most High God; but those were 
days of darkness." There are far too many peo- 
ple in nominally Christian communities who still 
love darkness rather than light. But it is incon- 
ceivable that such scenes could be repeated in 
Christian homes to-day. Several States and large 
sections of many others have passed prohibitory 
and no-license laws, which are executed as suc- 
cessfully as any laws against vice and crime. 
Many citizens are urging such laws, as a distin- 
guished educator In the South said, on the simple, 
ground of self-protection, for the protection of 
life and property against those made Insane by 
drink. It Is stated that fifteen millions of our 



I70 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

people are living in nine states under Statewide 
prohibition, or about one-sixth of the entire popu- 
lation. In twenty-five states more than fifty per 
cent, of the territory is dry, and in thirteen states 
more than seventy-five per cent, is dry. An im- 
mense amount of literature portraying the fearful 
evils of alcoholism from a physical and economical 
as well as moral standpoint, has been published 
and widely circulated. Temperance societies and 
anti-saloon leagues are vigorously and patiently 
at work, hoping in due time by means of an awak- 
ened moral sentiment to have a controlling voice 
in the national politics. 

A mighty work of reformation still remains for 
the church of Christ to do for the salvation of the 
bodies and souls of men from the destroying in- 
fluence of intoxicating drink, and the removal of 
this formidable obstacle to the progress of the 
kingdom of God. The terrible judgment needs 
to be loudly and constantly proclaimed from every 
pulpit in the land — " No drunkard shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven," whatever his position in 
the social scale; and the lofty principle of Chris- 
tian self-denial and true brotherhood needs to be 
urged again and again — " If meat make my 
brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh forevermore, 
that I make not my brother to stumble." The 
progress of the past in sentiment and determina- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 171 

tion to abolish this great evil prognosticates the 
final victory. It needs to be added that unless 
labor-unions incorporate a temperance plank into 
their platforms and conscientiously live up to it, 
and unless reformers and socialists of every name, 
Christian and anti-Christian, grapple and strangle 
the drink-habit which is the prolific source of 
waste, poverty, misery, degradation, vice and 
crime, they are only playing with reform and so- 
cial betterment. The following confession of the 
result of personal observation is from the pen of 
Carroll D. Wright, that eminent student of eco- 
nomics : " I have looked into a thousand homes 
of the working people of Europe; I do not know 
how many in my own country. In every case, so 
far as my observation goes, drunkenness was at 
the bottom of the misery, and not the industrial 
system or the industrial surroundings of the men 
and their families." Phillips Brooks once re- 
marked that if intemperance could be wiped out, 
there would not be poverty and misery enough 
left to keep our Christian charity in healthy ex- 
ercise. The temperance movement, which was 
born of the activity of Christian men and women, 
is still largely in their hands. The church of 
Christ is not yet completely aroused, to its shame 
be it said; but when the church in which resides 
the omnipotence of God and through which He 



172 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

works, shall present a united and aggressive front 
to the opposing forces of evil, viz., social customs 
in high life, heartless greed, enslaving appetite 
and a subsidized secular press, they will go down 
before it. 

Moreover, whatever moral instinct has existed 
in the hearts of the people, whatever inborn sense 
of right and justice, the church of Christ has 
quickened, interpreted, enlightened, enforced and 
energized it, so that the church by its ministra- 
tions, and by the consistent lives, examples and ef- 
forts of its members has been the chief promoter 
of public moral sentiment and civic righteousness. 
One has only to imagine the condition of a com- 
munity, a city or a nation, in which the moral in- 
fluence of the church has never been felt or should 
be blotted out, to form an idea of the indebted- 
ness of the general public to its preservative and 
beneficent power. Men who ignore or repudiate 
the authority and teachings of the religion of Jesus 
Christ, are enjoying in their homes, in their social 
and business life and in the undisturbed privileges 
of citizenship the incalculable benefits of its ac- 
tive presence. The moral influence of the Gospel 
permeates all walks and conditions of life. Christ 
still comes to his own, though his own receive him 
not. What Harold Begbie says of his nation is 
equally true of America. " Materialism in Eng- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 173 

land Is saturated through and through with the 
ethical Ideals of Jesus; our Intellectual agnosticism 
Is moral with the Inexpugnable leaven of Christian- 
ity." It can be said with absolute confidence that 
the world Is a better world to live In than the 
world of a hundred years ago, and that It is a 
better church which lives In It, with a vastly better 
equipment, and a more aggressive spirit, and 
higher ideals of its life and mission. 

A recent issue of " The Christian Work and 
Evangelist " contained the following positive ex- 
pression of its belief. " We believe that never 
in any period of the world's history was the church, 
making more earnest effort than It is to-day to 
reach the people and to build up the kingdom of 
God. In half a million churches next Sunday 
Christ will be truly preached. There never was 
so devoted and passionate humanltarianism mani- 
fested as the church to-day is exercising. Never 
has the church shown such enthusiasm for the 
kingdom of God in the world." 

Professor George W. Knox of the Union Theo- 
logical Seminary says, in '' The Gospel of Jesus," 
*' Never before was the Gospel of Jesus in Its 
sincerity so widely recognized and followed; never 
before was there such enthusiasm in the service 
of humanity; never before did so many powers 



174 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

combine for the doing of the Father's will on 
earth." 

These testimonies are samples of innumerable 
expressions of belief that might be adduced. 
They voice the very general conviction of think- 
ing men, based upon a candid and comprehensive 
survey of the religious conditions of the world and 
the progress and present activity of organized 
Christianity. A narrow view, limited to certain 
local and variable aspects, may sometimes be dis- 
heartening; but a broad outlook upon society and 
the world will confirm and strengthen the faith 
and courage born of the positive, unmistakable 
and repeated promises of the Almighty in refer- 
ence to the triumph of his Kingdom. 

There are a few people, among whom is a small 
body of Christian interpreters, who believe that 
the world is constantly growing worse, and that 
even the church of Christ is becoming more cor- 
rupt and increasingly false to the teachings of Its 
divine Master. Sometimes these Interpreters 
seem almost jubilant In their pessimistic belief, 
for according to their Interpretation of Scripture 
prophecy, these conditions foretoken the speedy 
personal coming of Jesus Christ in judgment. It 
is declared that " the church is In a pitiable condi- 
tion," " It Is daily growing weaker," " It Is In fact 
dying, and Its occasional spasms of righteousness 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 175 

are only the galvanic twitching of Its stiffening 
members." The Inevitable effect of such a belief 
is to paralyze all Christian effort, to silence the 
voice of prayer, to destroy faith In the saving 
power of the Gospel of Christ and in the pur- 
pose of Christ to endow his church with such 
strength that the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it, and to extinguish all hope in the full, 
glad coming of his kingdom and its triumph over 
all the kingdoms of the world. Such a belief, 
as if it was an integral part of the programme of 
Christ, is gloomy beyond expression. To rejoice 
in it would be unnatural and inhuman. 

Few men can be found who will endorse the 
astonishing assertions of Alfred Russel Wallace, 
contained in his recent volume entitled " Social En- 
vironment and Moral Progress." He says, " I 
have come to the general conclusion that there has 
been no advance either In Intellect or morals from 
the days of the earliest Egyptians to the keel-lay- 
ing of the latest Dreadnaught." Again he says, 
*' It is not too much to say that our whole system 
of society is rotten from top to bottom, and the 
social environment as a whole. In relation to our 
possibilities and our claims. Is the worst the world 
has ever seen." Such utterances are the blindest 
and wildest utterances of a pessimistic socialism, 
which sees no progress in the human race, and has 



176 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

no faith In the forces that have been working for 
its advance, and have produced a Christian civili- 
zation. And what is worse, Mr. Wallace has 
only one remedy for the conditions which he thinks 
he sees, and that is a remedy out of which God 
and religion have been eliminated. 

When men thoughtlessly, or in a hostile spirit, 
or in mistaken sincerity dwell upon the imagined In- 
effectiveness of Christian churches, they are blind 
to the fact that they are universally the homes of 
individual and social purity, that they are the ex- 
ponents of righteousness in doctrine and in life, 
that they hold up persistently the highest ethical 
standards, that they are as a solid sea-wall to 
protect communities against the encroachments of 
vice and crime of every description, and that In 
them Is deposited the hope of the world's redemp- 
tion. Judge Lewis L. Fawcett of Brooklyn has 
made this significant revelation of personal ex- 
perience. " Approximately 2700 cases have been 
brought before me In my f^ve and a half years of 
service on the bench. During all this time I have 
never had to try a man who was at the time of 
the alleged offense, or ever had been, an active 
member of the church." Similar testimony has 
been given by a judge In Chicago, before whom 
have come many divorce suits. He said, 
" Rarely, almost .never, were the parties to a di- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 177 

vorce suit active church workers." The question 
arises whether the. apparently careful emphasis 
laid In both instances upon the activity of the 
parties, and by Implication upon the lack of it, is 
not suggestive. An Idle profession may be no 
ce,rtain protection against wrong-doing. Judge 
Fawcett added, — " I have asked each young crim- 
inal who came before me, If he was a member or 
an attendant at a Sunday School, and I have never 
been answered Yes. . . . When by means of sus- 
pended sentence I have seen fit to give young pris- 
oners opportunities to lead better lives, I have in- 
sisted that the first thing they must do Is to join a 
Sunday School." 

A leading religious editor commenting on these 
remarkable testimonies to the restraining Influ- 
ence of organized Christianity, said — " It really 
looks as though the Christian church quite suffi- 
ciently justified Its existence to the nation merely 
as a preventive of crime, a barrier against relapse 
into barbarism, a police agency In preserving 
order, a preservative of common virtue and de- 
cency. We believe any careful student of sociol- 
ogy and morals will sustain Judge Fawcett's state- 
ment that the church Is a great curb on crime. 
Furthermore, we believe that he would agree that 
It Is the wall which holds the race from falling 
back into primeval habits and criminal Instincts. 



178 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

. . . Most of our respectable, attractive commu- 
nities of high moral tone are so because the church 
of Christ is there. Our beautiful towns are what 
they are, instead of hotbeds of vice, drunkenness 
and crime, because the church of Christ is there. 
. . . Were not the town predominantly Christian, 
crime would make it impossible as a home. There- 
fore every man in the community owes a debt of 
gratitude to the church. He profits from it, 
whether he serves it or not. It is better burglar 
insurance than insurance companies. It makes the 
streets safer for his daughters. The stronger the 
church is, the cleaner, healthier, safer, happier, 
more respectable the town. If every man were in 
the church, it would save most of the expense for 
police, judges, lawyers and courts. Judge Faw- 
cett tells us that crime now costs us $700,000,000 
a year. It would cost us hardly any of that, if all 
were in the churches. Really the man who is 
living in our crime-free, respectable towns, and 
does nothing for the church, is living on charity. 
He is profiting from the church's curb on crime, 
but is giving nothing in return." The Christian 
church Is the greatest moral as well as spiritual 
force in the community. The first question of an 
educated man who owes his education in no small 
part to the generous gifts of the Christian public, 
should be, not what can I get out of the church, 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 179 

but how can I help It, and Increase Its power for 
good. Otherwise unless the selfishness of his heart 
has been brought under the control of the higher 
motive, his education has failed In Its noble pur- 
pose. 

A clergyman In a Western city, desiring to know 
the views of Intelligent laymen upon religious 
faiths and problems, propounded a list of ques- 
tions to 120 of *' the most prominent business 
men " of his city, and published a summary of their 
answers. One of the questions pertained to the 
church and Its Influence In the world. The follow- 
ing Is his report of the answers returned. " Not 
one unkind criticism or weak Indorsement of the 
church was received. Appreciation of the church 
was comprehensively and startllngly expressed. 
Witness the following: The church stands first 
in the world's institutions for the good of mankind 
in every relationship of life ; the church is the foun- 
dation of civilization, and Is doing great good; the 
world would be lost without churches ; without the 
moral teachings of the church the world's degen- 
eration would inevitably follow; It Is the keystone 
of social order, society would be chaos without It; 
it uplifts the world and does away with vice; it 
teaches that, regardless of future reward, morality 
pays, not In money or glory, but In all that makes 
a man satisfied with himself; It creates and keeps 



i8o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

alive high ideals; the example of its members in 
living right is of great value; it emphasizes the 
spiritual against the material; it elevates, softens, 
soothes and comforts humanity; it keeps us close 
to God." These are the candid judgments of 
men of business, who live in the midst of life and 
its practical affairs, and are able to estimate the 
influence of the churches upon personal character 
and social conditions. Such testimonies can be 
duplicated in every city in the land, and the fact 
has convincing weight with all unprejudiced minds. 
It is well to remember the often quoted rebuke 
said to have been uttered by James Russell Low- 
ell, when minister to the Court of Saint James, 
in the presence of a group of literary men, some of 
whom were boasting that they and the rest of the 
world could get on safely without the religion of 
Christ. " When the keen scrutiny of skeptics has 
found a place on this planet where a decent man 
may live in decency, comfort and security, support- 
ing and educating his children unspoiled and un- 
polluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy 
protected, womanhood honored, and human life 
held in high regard, — when skeptics can find such 
a place ten miles square on this globe, where the 
Gospel of Christ has not gone before, and cleared 
the way, and laid the foundations that made de- 
cency and security possible, it will then be in order 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST i8i 

for these skeptical literati to move thither, and 
there ventilate their views. But so long as these 
men are dependent on the very religion which they 
discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may 
well hesitate to rob the Christian of his hope and 
humanity of its faith in the Saviour, who alone 
has given to men the hope of eternal life, which 
makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs 
death of its terrors and the grave of Its gloom.'* 
It is said that Dr. Horace Bushnell was once 
appealing to a man of wealth for a contribution 
towards the erection of a church In a new town In 
the West, and urged his appeal by saying that the 
existence of a Christian church would minister to 
material values in a community as well as to pri- 
vate virtue and public morality. When the man 
of wealth questioned the truth of his statement, 
Dr. Bushnell quickly asked him, " What would 
your real estate be worth In Sodom?" The 
Christian church Is the conservator of all values, 
material as well as moral and spiritual. A vital 
godliness has been and will continue to be our only 
safeguard against misrule and anarchy. The ex- 
istence of vice and crime, of political corruption 
and vicious legislation, of fraud and graft, of op- 
pression and wrong, continues to curse the body 
politic, only because the Prince of Peace and 
Righteousness has not yet been allowed to have 



1 82 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

full sway among the people. The disciples of 
Christ have made their influence felt mightily, and 
by no means in vain, but the full victory is yet in 
the future. The progress of moral sentiment in a 
community is not to be judged always by the con- 
tinued existence of certain evils. The truer 
criterion is, what is the attitude of the public con- 
science towards them? Are these evils unrecog- 
nized and condoned, or are they recognized and 
condemned? The gross exhibitions of moral de- 
pravity, in high places and low, which now and 
then startle the community, serve to reveal the 
vigorous moral sentiment of the people, which in- 
variably expresses itself in swift, positive and un- 
mistakable condemnation. 

It should be added as one of the moral achieve- 
ments of the last century, that the Hague Court, 
established for the peaceable settlement of inter- 
national disputes which until very recent years 
were wont to be submitted to the arbitrament of 
cruel and barbaric war, which settles nothing ex- 
cept the superiority of brute force or power of en- 
durance on one side or the other, is a conspicuous 
illustration of the progress of a Christian civili- 
zation and has been secured largely through the 
enforcement of Christian principles and the tri- 
umph of Christian sentiment. Already in a large 
number of instances disputes have been amicably 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 183 

adjusted by means of this Court, and the enor- 
mous waste and cruel suffering of war have been 
avoided. If the last century had been distin- 
guished for nothing else, this new tribunal and its 
remarkable success would have made it illustrious. 
It has a conspicuous place In the divine programme 
of the coming of the kingdom. It has brought 
perceptibly nearer the prophetic time, when under 
the reign of the great Prince of Peace *' nation 
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more.'* 

In general It may be affirmed that the church 
of Christ to-day occupies a higher ethical ground 
than ever before, and that the last century has 
lifted the Ideals of Jesus for Individual and per- 
sonal life, for society and for human government 
to a more cofisplcuous and luminous place In the 
judgment of thoughtful men than In the past, 
as the supreme standard of conduct and life for 
man in his every relation, and as the divine law 
which is to govern the kingdom of God on earth 
and In Heaven. 

Luther's Interpretation of the practical nature 
of the Christian religion, viz., *' Good works fol- 
low redemption as the fruit grows on the tree," 
has certainly been the prevailing belief of Protes- 
tant Christianity. The great preachers and the 
great revivalists of the last century have empha- 



1 84 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

sized honesty and integrity of character as a neces- 
sary sequence of personal faith in Jesus Christ, 
and their preaching has often been followed by 
marvelous exhibitions of voluntary restitution and 
reparation of wrong on the part of converts. 
Men who have been brought into right relations 
with God have hastened to come into right re- 
lations with their fellow men. The epistles of 
Paul and the epistle of James have been accepted 
as of equal authority and as integral parts of the 
one divine Gospel proclaimed by Christ, whose 
legitimate, whose expected, whose genuine fruits 
would be regenerated men, 

" Whose faith and works are bells in full accord." 

Our ablest theologians have believed that to 
draw a distinction between the writings of Paul 
and Christ or of Paul and James to the disparage- 
ment of Paul, as if his writings were lacking in 
ethical force, is to misunderstand utterly the great 
apostle. Dr. Galusha Anderson has well said — 
*' One has but to run his eye over Paul's epistles 
to be convinced of the utter incorrectness of this 
charge. Very much that he wrote was for the 
very purpose of correcting unchristian conduct. 
The twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth chapters 
of Romans are wholly ethical. First Corinthians 
deals almost entirely with Christian morals. The 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 185 

eighth and ninth chapters of Second Corinthians 
are devoted to the duty of giving. In Ephesians 
whole chapters are solidly ethical. A large space 
in Colossians is also. And so it is, In different 
degrees, in all Paul's letters. Moreover, moral 
precepts are scattered through all his doctrinal 
discussions. Paul was always earnestly and In- 
tensely practical. His aim in every argument was 
to secure right thinking and consequently right 
conduct. His doctrines flowered and fruited into 
duty." 

President E. Y. Mullins says, " If the reader 
will turn to the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth 
chapters of Romans and compare these with the 
Sermon on the Mount, he will be struck with the 
resemblances." Dr. Sanday expresses the same 
view in these words, " To these verbal resem- 
blances must be added remarkable identity of 
teaching In these successive chapters." And 
Knowling, as quoted by Dr. Sanday, adds, " In- 
deed It is not too much to add that the Apostle's 
description of the Kingdom of God reads like a 
brief summary of its description In the Sermon on 
the Mount." 

If additional testimony Is needed to the preva- 
lent belief that the ethical teachings of Paul are In 
full harmony with those of Christ, the following 
striking quotation is taken from the able volume 



1 86 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

of R. W. Livingstone on " The Greek Genius and 
its Meaning to Us." " Turn to the close of one 
of his epistles, where with warning and encourage- 
ment, with argument and exhortation, the apos- 
tle is urging on some infant community the prac- 
tice of the Christian virtues. One on the heels of 
another, his precepts come tumbling out, breaking 
impetuously into questions, reinforced by quota- 
tions, by adjurations, by appeals to his personal 
appearance by prayers, by tears. It Is difficult to 
select single Instances from Saint Paul, for the 
whole of his epistles are instinct with a feeling 
which, except perhaps for certain passages in Plato 
and Euripides, Is absent from Greek literature, a 
passionate hunger for righteousness, a passionate 
indignation against those who frustrate it. He 
overflows In enthusiastic denunciations. Of sex- 
ual vice he writes let it not be once named among 
you. Of avarice he says that the covetous man 
has no inheritance In the kingdom of God. . . . 
Everywhere he Is Insistent In season and out of 
season, without regard of consequences, to con- 
demn evil. For him Christ can have no concord 
with Belial." 

Whatever may have been the failures of the 
Christian church In the nineteenth century, for fail- 
ures as well as successes have marked the progress 
of the years, they have not been the result of 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 187 

a misunderstanding of the teachings of Christ and 
his apostles, or of a lack of faith in their applica- 
bility to all the conditions of human life, or in the 
divine sufficiency of their remedial power, a faith 
which Christian experience has served only to 
strengthen and confirm. 

'' New occasions teach new duties." Social 
conditions have arisen, of which the fathers never 
dreamed, — strife between capital and labor with 
fault on both sides, in many instances the oppres- 
sion of the poor and powerless, the hardships of 
toiling women and children, the unsanitary condi- 
tion of the modern slum, the glaring inequalities 
which exist in society, the colossal corruption in 
high places, and the prevalence of nameless and 
shameless vices. These conditions present new 
and serious problems in new lights. They widen 
the application of the Gospel of Christ, and fur- 
nish new fields for the enforcement of its right- 
eous and humane principles. But the Gospel is 
the one divine and all sufficient remedy. To 
abandon the remedy prescribed by infinite Wis- 
dom, and think to change evil conditions by simply 
changing environment, or by an analytical study 
of the disease, or by enacting legislation without 
changing the moral character of men and women, 
would be to rub the empty bottle on the diseased 
part, and expect by so doing to effect a cure. So- 



1 88 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

ciology Is the one study that can least get on with- 
out a vital Christianity. A thoughtful writer has 
said, " Law is great, but religion is greater, and 
we shall have gained very little, if as the Arch- 
bishop of York told the Congress of the Sanitary 
Institute in his cathedral city, we produce a race 
' physically fit, but spiritually, mentally and mor- 
ally sterile/ It is in that direction that the danger 
lies, and it is a danger to which we have as yet 
given far too little consideration. There is abun- 
dant room for that regeneration which is the only 
effective and lasting antidote to degeneration.'' 

Dr. Josiah Strong, speaking of " the new so- 
cial ideal " which is being advocated in certain 
quarters to-day, pronounces it " little more than a 
millennium of creature comfort. It needs to be 
elevated, illuminated and glorified by Christ's so- 
cial ideal. It is quite possible for society to be at 
the same time well housed, well fed, well clothed, 
well educated, and well rotted. The world can 
never be saved from misery until It Is saved from 
sin, and never ought to be. The Ideal of Chris- 
tianity is that of a society in which God's will is 
done as perfectly as it is in heaven; one in which 
absolute obedience is rendered to every law of our 
being, physical, mental, spiritual, social; and this 
is nothing more nor less than the kingdom of God 
fully come in the earth." 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 189 

President Augustus H. Strong says In " Chapel 
Talks," " Christianity alms at both reform and 
regeneration, but it puts cause before effect, re- 
generation before reform." " Make the tree 
good and its fruit good," says Christ. Much of 
our modern socialistic propaganda, however, ig- 
nores this logical relation, and thinks to purify the 
stream without touching the fountain. He quotes 
from Horace Mann who said, " One former 
is worth a hundred reformers," and adds, " Let 
us who are preachers take that comfort to our- 
selves. We are set to purify the springs of hu- 
man action, and that Is a grander thing than to 
direct the course of the stream after It has be- 
gun to flow. Reform will come in due time, if 
regeneration has only gone before. It is our busi- 
ness to help on all true reform ; but as ministers of 
Christ, we can best do this by giving to the com- 
munity truly regenerated men." 

Prof. W. H. Maynard In an address before the 
Colgate Theological Seminary on "The Twen- 
tieth Century Preacher," says — " Had the Master 
with his twelve legions of angels, deposed the 
Emperor Tiberius, retired to private life every 
corrupt official, enacted a perfect code of laws, 
and appointed model officers for their enforce- 
ment, and thereupon reascended to Heaven, 
doubtless the old corruptions would have soon re- 



190 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

turned. It is a fact too generally overlooked, 
that under any system righteousness will reign 
only in proportion as men become righteous." 

The following extracts from '* A Warning " by 
Professor Shailer Mathews have no uncertain 
sound. " A danger to which Protestantism, par- 
ticularly progressive Protestantism, in America is 
exposed is that its churches shall become mere 
agents of social service. . . . But we cannot let 
social service take the place of God. ... A 
Protestant church cannot be an ethical orphan 
asylum ; it must be a home in which souls are born 
into newness of life. We want efficiency in or- 
ganization and in activity. We want our minis- 
ters to be alive to the needs of the hour, etc. . . . 
But most of all does American Protestantism need 
a spiritual passion, a contagious faith in the su- 
premacy of God's spiritual order and an alarm 
at the misery that waits on sin. From many a 
community there is already rising a cry for ele- 
mental religion. With all their scientific and 
business success, American laymen are asserting 
that they want to be assured of God and immor- 
tality and the worth of righteousness. They 
want companionship in spiritual loneliness, com- 
fort in hours of pain, courage in moments of moral 
wavering. Their souls are athirst for the Un- 
known, and they will be satisfied with nothing 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 191 

save the water that comes from the River of 
God." 

And Dr. J. H. Jowett utters a like warning 
when he says, " Men may become so absorbed in 
social wrongs as to miss the deeper malady of 
personal sin. They may lift the rod of oppres- 
sion and leave the burden of guilt. They may! 
seek to correct dislocations and overlook the awful 
disorder of the soul." 

The primary duty of the Christian church and 
pulpit is supremely personal. It is not, as has 
been said, to create an atmosphere merely favor- 
able to the solution of social problems, nor simply 
to proclaim a divine standard of life and conduct, 
but it is to create Christian men and women, with 
hearts touched by the divine life, with a clearer 
vision of God's truth and man's duty, with an 
earnest, self-denying purpose which will not be 
satisfied with any superficial remedies or half-way 
measures, but will seek in Christ's way to destroy 
the works of the Devil and bring in the kingdom 
of God; in a word, who will not only pray '' thy 
kingdom come," but will intelligently, prayer- 
fully, unitedly, persistently labor to make it come. 
Someone has said, '' Produce great persons, the 
rest will follow," whether persons or the condi- 
tions which make for human progress. 

It has been wisely remarked, " Not wells flow- 



192 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

ing with oil, nor mines teeming with silver and 
gold, nor plains covered with flocks and herds so 
enrich a State as noble men and noble women, 
equipped by training and culture to meet all the 
demands and high opportunities of our Christian 
civilization." The church of Jesus Christ in 
these recent years has been especially fruitful, 
not only in producing such noble men and no- 
ble women, but in producing the Christian 
civilization with its insistent demands and 
its high opportunities. It has created both the 
demand and the supply. The women of our 
churches, as well as the men, have been enlisted 
as never before in the varied activities of our 
time, educational, philanthropic, reformatory and 
missionary. Christianity from the time of its 
introduction exalted woman to a place of equal 
honor and responsibility in the family life; but 
not until the last half century were there opened 
to her the splendid opportunities of privilege and 
of service which she now enjoys and welcomes. 
It is as if she had come to a new emancipation. 

It should be remembered that the men and the 
women demanded by the times can be created only 
by placing the emphasis upon the things of the 
spirit, the being of God, the mission of his Son 
Jesus Christ our Lord, the new life by the divine 
Spirit, communion with the unseen and eternal, 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 193 

the far vision that is not limited by the physical, 
the earthly, the temporal. *' In the world, but 
not of It " Is the secret of the highest life and 
blessedness and power. He who would lift up 
the world must have a life above it and a strength 
superior to It. The world has become intensely 
materialistic. The outward and visible crowds 
out all thought of the spiritual and eternal. The 
Christian church is the divinely appointed agency, 
whose chief mission is to remind man of his higher 
nature and minister to it. Its spiritual aim must 
be paramount and overtop everything else. Its 
spiritual message must ever be exalted to the place 
of supreme Importance. Man Is more than flesh 
and bones. Life Is more than meat and raiment. 
To look no higher than physical needs and social 
reforms Is to forget the divine image and the glory 
of true manhood. These ought you to have done, 
and not to leave the other undone. The following 
article taken from the platform of " The Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ In America," 
expresses clearly and succinctly the lofty ideal and 
purpose of Christianity. " Christ's mission is 
not merely to reform society, but to save it. He 
Is more than the world's Readjustee He Is Its 
Redeemer. The church becomes worthless for its 
higher purpose when it deals with conditions and 
forgets character, relieves misery and Ignores sin, 



194 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

pleads for justice and undervalues forgiveness." 
Another has said, " The greatest service the 
church can render to the community lies in the 
message she proclaims. In the midst of organiza- 
tions and administrations she is sadly impover- 
ished, and the community is destitute indeed, if 
she loses her lofty note of spiritual insight and 
vision. The temporal passes away. She is to 
reveal unto men the eternal. When she inspires 
a man to hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
when she imparts a glimpse of the invisible, when 
she draws down from the heavenly places a little 
of the unattained, she is setting the high ideal and 
lifting humanity heavenward as no other agency 
can do. To her it Is given to preach the mys- 
tery of Christ." 

Has the church been doing this, and Is It doing 
it to-day? Is It seeking to fulfill Its exalted mis- 
sion, and with honest purpose and pure heart 
striving to live up to Its high ideals? Making 
allowance for human weakness and possible cases 
of self-deception, is its testimony clear and strong 
to the spiritual and ethical nature of Its mes- 
sage? Is it deserving of the sharp criticism 
which Is sometimes heard In unexpected quar- 
ters? The Christian teacher and author, al- 
ready quoted, has publicly asserted that " The 
church maintains a splendid Ideal of the king- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 195 

dom, but only as an ideal, somediing too spirit- 
ual to be expected in this life, a hope for the 
world to come, and as to this world it winks at 
all injustice and iniquity." Again he asserted, 
*' To-day the church pardons, if it does not en- 
courage, ways of doing business totally irrecon- 
cilable with the Gospel and at variance with the 
fundamental instincts of justice." These words 
of sweeping condemnation from such a source are 
as unjust as they are surprising, and are exceed- 
ingly regrettable. They give countenance to the 
bitter and blasphemous assaults of infidelity, and 
confirm it in its hostility and unbelief. They im- 
ply the possession of a knowledge which no man 
possesses, and an absence of a charity which 
every man ought to possess. There may be some 
persons who bear the name of Christ, and un- 
doubtedly are, whose business methods will not 
bear the light of Christian morality or of com- 
mon honesty, who " break God's laws for a divi- 
dend," but to charge the whole Christian church 
with being false to its profession, and sheltering 
injustice and fraud, and with criminally encour- 
aging and conniving at all iniquity, would be like 
charging the eleven apostles with wicked com- 
plicity with Judas In his base betrayal of his Lord. 
Can the Christian ministry and the Christian 
church In all Its branches in our day be looked 



196 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

upon as a generation of hypocrites, or as making 
as empty profession of a religion of whose re- 
quirements they are grossly ignorant or willfully 
neglectful? Are not the great body of the dis- 
ciples of Christ holding in reverent regard the 
ethical teachings of their divine Master, both as 
to the inner spirit and the outer conduct, and 
acknowledging their binding authority, and are 
they not humbly and conscientiously endeavoring 
to incorporate them, in living examples? Is not 
the Christian pulpit universally demanding justice 
and charity among men, and proclaiming loudly 
and insistently, and with a wider application than 
ever before, the high ideals of Jesus? Is not 
the church devoting thought and strength in- 
creasingly to moral reform and ever inaugurating 
new methods of social betterment ? Rev. Charles 
Stelzle states (and no man is better informed), 
" A study of over a thousand professional social 
workers as to church affiliation shows that of those 
who were associated charity workers 92% were 
church members. ... As a matter of fact, the 
church practically controls through its member- 
ship nearly every great philanthropic movement 
of any consequence. Glance at the list of direc- 
tors and verify this statement. Practically all of 
the money that goes to the hospitals, orphan 
asylums, clubs and charitable institutions of 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 197 

various kinds comes from the church people. 
Without them these could not exist." The church 
cannot justly be charged with indifference to ex- 
isting needs and conditions. If there is any fail- 
ure and any peril at the present time it is in spend- 
ing the strength upon attempts to supply the needs, 
while the fountain is allowed to remain corrupt, 
seeking to change environment and conditions 
without changing disposition and character, sub- 
stituting outward comfort and decency for inward 
godliness, in a word, allowing moral reforms and 
social movements to assume an importance above 
the fundamental truths of the Christian faith and 
the sublime realities of the Christian experience. 
Professor Royce of Cambridge says, in 
" Sources of Religious Insight," '' There are some 
clergymen to whom the preaching of religion has 
come to mean in the main the preaching of benef- 
icent social reforms." But religion has to do 
fundamentally with a man's spiritual and immor- 
tal nature. It anticipates the next world as well 
as this. Even a man's life here cannot be saved 
from weakness and failure, and be enabled to 
attain unto its largest meaning and service by 
purely human and external means. Workers in 
social settlements are learning from experience 
that back of all social reform that looks for suc- 
cessful and permanent fruits, there must be the 



198 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

religious faith with its regenerating and trans- 
forming power. Indeed this is the supreme and 
inspiring motive and divine method of all such 
reform work. Another has said, " But giving the 
merely social settlement all its due, there are still 
many who believe that it comes far short of meet- 
ing the deepest need. There are many who pro- 
foundly believe that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus 
Christ directly applied is the greatest uplifting 
force known, even to social science, and that ex- 
perimenting with ethical culture and social re- 
forms without direct religious effort is, to use the 
language of a noted missionary worker, trying to 
elevate the masses without the elevator." All 
true love to man has its roots in love to God. 
The second commandment of the law, epitomized 
by Christ, is inseparably connected with the first, 
and grows out of it. The order is significant. 
Christianity works from within outward, and not 
vice versa. The divine order cannot be inverted. 
The fruit of the tree is dependent upon the life- 
giving sap. Out of the heart are the issues of 
life. Right living is dependent upon right be- 
lieving and right thinking. To know God and 
Jesus Christ whom He has sent is life, in its fullest 
and deepest meaning, is life here and life here- 
after. A man must first learn to sing out of an 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 199 

Intelligent appreciation and vital experience, with 
Charles Wesley, 

" Oh for a thousand tongues to sing 

My dear Redeemer's praise, 
The glories of my God and King, 

The triumphs of his grace," 

before he can sing trustingly, lovingly and sub- 
missively with Washington Gladden, 

" Oh, Master, let me walk with Thee 
In lowly paths of service free." 

There is no antithesis in these hymns, but only 
a natural and logical sequence. 

In the preaching of the pulpit and in the work 
of the church, it must not be forgotten that Chris- 
tianity deals primarily with the individual. Its 
message is to the individual. Its command is, 
" Follow thou me." It is to change social condi- 
tions, determine public sentiment, root out iniquity 
and every form of evil, establish righteousness and 
peace and brotherhood on the earth, and bring in 
the kingdom of God, as men one by one accept its 
message and yield obedience to its commands. 
For strong as Is Christ's emphasis upon Individual 
disclpleship. It is everywhere understood to have 
far-reaching relationships. He himself declared, 
" Ye, my disciples, are the light of the world. 
Ye are the salt of the earth." Dr. Stalker has 



200 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

called Christ " the discoverer of the Individual/' 
He was that, and He was more than that. He 
was the revealer of the true social order, and also 
of the divine method of Its realization, an order 
for which there Is no adequate human substitute, 
and an order based upon the worth of the In- 
dividual soul and resulting from Its splrlt-qulck- 
ened life and Its gracious activities. Whenever 
the church of Christ has become formal and lost 
Its spirituality, when the salt has lost its savor. 
It has been Irresponsive to social needs or has 
resorted to unscriptural methods for their relief. 
The more spiritual the church has been, the more 
sensitive It has been to human needs and the 
swifter to respond to them. The methods of that 
response, the outward forms of Its activity, have 
changed with the changing conditions; but what- 
ever the forms of service undertaken, genuine 
success has always depended, and will depend ever- 
more, upon the vital principle and spiritual pur- 
pose which Inspire and pervade them all. 

The past Is often characterized as the age of 
the Individual, while the present Is spoken of, by 
way of contrast, as the social age, with its wide- 
spread social sympathies and numberless social 
activities. There may be some truth In this dis- 
tinction, says Dr. Cleland B. McAfee, but there 
Is danger of Its being overaccented. '* There were 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 201 

many of our fathers and grandfathers," he says, 
*' who were mightily concerned with the mass of 
the people, and looked as carefully as we do for 
a corrective of social evils." He adds as a con- 
spicuous evidence of this fact, " The first English 
translations of the Bible were fruits of the social 
impulse." Tyndale said, " If God give me life, 
the plowboys shall know more of the Scriptures 
than you do." The same is true of the German 
Bible of Luther. No movement of modern times 
can compare with the enlightening, emancipating, 
uplifting, equalizing, ameliorating influence of 
that movement which gave the word of God to the 
people in their native tongue. That social Im- 
pulse, born of a devout spiritual faith, was the 
author of all that is good in our modern civiliza- 
tion, and contained the prophecy of that perfect 
social democracy for which the world still waits. 

It Is an acknowledged fact, then, that the Gos- 
pel when rightly interpreted is individualistic and 
socialistic in the truest sense, and at the same time. 
" Exclusively It Is neither; inclusively It Is both." 
Its individualism is utterly free from all taint of 
narrowness or selfishness. Its socialism Is di- 
vinely spiritual. Its aim for the Individual Is 
likeness to Christ, the perfect man, our elder 
brother, in character and in life, and individual 
perfection of character includes the recognition of 



202 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

all social obligations and the practice of all social 
virtues. Redeemed men will Inevitably produce 
a redeemed society and a redeemed humanity. 
Dean Shaller Mathews of the Chicago Univer- 
sity, In an admirable paper on the subject, " A 
Strategic Movement for Baptists," with a sub- 
title, " A Platform and an Opportunity," declares 
In Article 8 of his Platform. '' The individual 
possessed of the Spirit of Christ is of supreme 
worth. Baptists recognize no antithesis between 
the Individual and the social Gospel. They work 
for the kingdom of God, and may be counted upon 
to champion every advance toward social right- 
eousness. But they Insist that the Individual Is 
not to be lost In the mass, and that a regenerate 
society Is possible only when composed of re- 
generate people. They therefore seek to de- 
velop Individual lives Into religious and moral ef- 
ficiency rather than to superimpose upon them 
religious authority or any form of ecclesiastical 
aristocracy." Mr. R. H. Coates, an English au- 
thor, in his volume entitled " Types of English 
Piety," distinguishes the evangelical type from 
the sacerdotal on the one hand, and on the other 
from the mystical, In that " It seeks to approach 
God through the redeemed conscience, the moral 
will, and the establishment of the righteous State," 
and demands In the true saint not " the anaemic 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 203 

and aureoled recluse," but " the full blooded and 
effective citizen with a passion for the sovereignty 
of God in the affairs of the world." 

Though present-day Christians come far short 
of attaining their sublime ideal, they are in a mul- 
titude of instances prayerfully striving to make it 
practical and real. Imperfect as the life of the 
church may appear, when compared with the one 
perfect Example of obedience, of purity and of 
love, history records no higher level. The hum- 
ble washerwoman exclaimed, looking upon her 
washing as it hung upon the line amid the falling 
snow, " Nothing can stand comparison with God 
Almighty's whiteness." There is, we must be- 
lieve, a purity and integrity and completeness of 
character yet to be secured. There are heights 
yet to be won even in our present state of exist- 
ence. The testimony of the living church is yet 
to be a more potent and convincing force in the 
regeneration of men and in the perfecting of so- 
cial conditions. While the perfect life and the 
perfect character and the perfect society are to 
be realized In Heaven, when we shall see the great 
Son of God as He is, and be like Him, this vision 
and hope are not the lifeless dream of the mys- 
tic, nor the idle fancy of the visionary, but the 
glorious inspiration of the Christian believer, as 
here and now he confronts God and man and 



204 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

duty. It is everlastingly true that " he that hath 
this hope in Him (that is in Christ) purifieth him- 
self even as He is pure." 

The kingdom of God or the kingdom of 
Heaven, for whose manifestation the whole crea- 
tion groaneth and travaileth in pain, is primarily, 
and fundamentally, and essentially spiritual In Its 
nature. It is not to be Identified with any ec- 
clesiastical body or visible realm, and is not to be 
brought about by organizations or reforms or 
enactments or external rite or force, but by the 
preaching of the Gospel received through per- 
sonal faith. We need to remind ourselves con- 
stantly of his conception of It, who came to earth 
to establish it, and who alone as acknowledged 
King has a right to define It, and power to estab- 
lish it. To the Pharisees who thought only of 
an outward visible kingdom, and demanded of 
Christ when it should come, He answered, " The 
kingdom of God cometh not with observation,'* 
and to the midnight Inquirer He disclosed the 
unalterable condition of admission Into it, when 
He said — " Except a man be born from above, 
he cannot see the kingdom of God." 

In conclusion, It may be said that a candid and 
unprejudiced review of the recent progress of the 
church of Christ and the substantial and outstand- 
ing victories it has already won, and a just recog- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 205 

nition of its present life and spirit, its accumulated 
power and increasing activity, will surely lead to 
three results, viz. : 

First, a profound sense of gratitude to God that 
in spite of human frailty and imperfection, the 
weakness, not to say the disobedience, of the hu- 
man instrumentality with which God works. He 
has marvelously carried forward his kingdom in 
the world, until the name of Christ is now highly 
exalted in much of the thought, the affection and 
the life of the nations. 

Secondly, an unshaken conviction in the funda- 
mental spiritual nature of Christianity, and in the 
adaptability of the unchanging Gospel to meet 
the deepest needs of the human heart, and to 
furnish the only adequate solution for the ills 
which now afflict or may hereafter afflict the social 
organism. 

And thirdly, a confident assurance that God's 
promises will in due time be fulfilled to the letter, 
that " in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow 
of things in Heaven, and things in earth, and 
things under the earth, and that every tongue 
shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord," and that 
" the kingdoms of this world shall become the 
kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He 
shall reign forever and ever." 

We may mourn over the sometimes apparently 



2o6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

slow coming of that kingdom, we may deplore 
the coldness and indifference of many who bear 
the name of Christ, we may long for a deeper 
consecration of heart and life on the part of every 
disciple, which beginning at the center of being 
shall reach the outmost circumference of human 
life and influence. But the forces of good are 
mightier than the forces of evil. It is God's king- 
dom, whose corner stone was laid at infinite cost, 
in his unerring wisdom, before the foundation of 
the world. " If God be for us, who can be 
against us?" So long as God lives and reigns, 
the Issue cannot be uncertain. When Frederick 
Douglass was once addressing a large convention 
In Tremont Temple, Boston, In ante-bellum times, 
and was portraying in dark and hopeless colors 
the condition of his enslaved race, the voice of 
Margaret Fuller, who sat behind him on the plat- 
form, was suddenly heard saying, " Frederick, 
Frederick, God Is not dead." 

We may not accept Browning's optimistic in- 
ference In the present tense in which he put It — 

" God is in his heavens, 
All's right with the world," 

for many things are far from right in the social 
order and in the moral condition of men. But 
we may have such faith in God and in his invlnci- 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 207 

ble purpose, In the enlightening power of his 
truth, in the active presence of his regenerating 
Spirit among men, and in the efficiency and suf- 
ficiency of the agencies which He has ordained 
and through which He has promised to work, that 
we can calmly and fearlessly affirm that in his own 
good time all will be right with the world. " His 
word shall not return unto Him void." The 
battle with error and wrong and sin will not be 
won by the timid and discouraged, but by the con- 
fident and courageous. To detect the evils in 
human society and the tremendous obstacles in 
the way of the coming of God's kingdom is not 
difficult, and requires no high order of genius. 
To face them unflinchingly, and march " breast 
forward, never doubting clouds will break," to 
cry in the darkest hour as if the triumph was al- 
ready secured, " thanks be to God who giveth 
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," 
that is noble, that Is Pauline, that is Christlike. 
Christ who was King in the realm of truth, the- 
ocentrlc, redemptive and prophetic, said to his 
trembling disciples, " Fear not, little flock, for It 
is your Father's good pleasure to give you the 
kingdom." There Is no room for pessimism In 
the Christian's vocabulary. His attitude should 
always be one of courage and expectancy. Al- 
ready he sees the dawn of that new day which 



208 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

shall dispel all the darkness and sorrow of sin, 
and gladden the whole habitable earth with its 
effulgence. Back of all our timid praying and 
feeble effort, and fronting the superhuman tasks 
before the church of Christ, stands the purpose of 
the Almighty, inscribed upon the uplifted cross, 
and voiced in the predictions of Him who died 
and rose again, and whose word cannot be broken. 
To some men these predictions may seem to 
be only an unsubstantial dream inspired by Jewish 
hopes. " But they come to us to-day," said Presi- 
dent Ewing in his eloquent address at the meeting 
of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ire- 
land, ^' as an integral element in his message to 
mankind, and they assure us that through all 
difficulties Christianity moves on to triumph, a 
triumph the fruit of the Redeemer's sacrifice, a 
triumph achieved not by worldly forces but by the 
power that comes down from above, and they 
identify that triumph with the personal exaltation 
of Jesus upon a throne of ineffable glory. A 
dream, is it? But the dreams of Jesus Christ 
are the shaping forces of history. He dreamed 
of Calvary, and his cross to-day is the hiding place 
of sinners. He dreamed of resurrection — and 
his open tomb is now the consolation of the world. 
He dreamed of a church He would build — and 
his church now worships Him in every clime. He 



THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 209 

dreamed of his return to conquer and reign — and 
amid all the turmoil of these latter days faith 
hears his herald's voice, and sees the flashing of 
his chariot wheels." 

The following jubilant anthem recently ap- 
peared in a publication in what was once darkest 
India. 

" There's a light upon the mountains, and the day is at the 

spring, 
When our eyes shall see the beauty and the glory of the King: 
Weary was our heart with waiting and the night-watch seemed 

so long, 
But his triumph-day is breaking, and we hail it with a song. 
In the fading of the starlight we can see the coming morn, 
And the lights of men are paling in the splendors of the dawn; 
For the eastern skies are glowing as with light of hidden fire. 
And the hearts of men are stirring with throbs of deep desire. 

There's a hush of expectation, and a quiet in the air. 

And the breath of God is moving in the fervent breath of 

prayer ; 
For the suffering, dying Jesus is the Christ upon the throne. 
And the travail of our spirit is the travail of his own. 
He is breaking down the barriers, he is casting up the way; 
He is calling for his angels to build up the gates of day; 
But his angels here are human, not the shining hosts above. 
For the drum-beats of his army are the heart-beats of our love. 
Hark! we hear the distant music, and it comes with fuller swell, 
'Tis the triumph-song of Jesus, of our King Emmanuel ! 
Zion, go ye forth to meet him ! And my soul, be swift to bring 
All thy sweetest and thy dearest for the triumph of our King ! " 



CHAPTER IV 

PEACE AND LIGHT ON THE CROSS 

An Interpretation 

WE shall never be able to comprehend in this 
life, and perhaps not in the life to come, 
the extent of that humiliation and the depth of 
that agony, when the great Son of God in the 
form of a servant bore our sins in his own body 
on the tree, and suffered the cruel death of the 
cross in our behalf. But the end has now come. 
The rejections, the betrayal, the arrest, the denial 
and abandonment by his disciples, the mocking, 
the scourging, the disgraceful trial, the hateful 
sentence, the blackness of darkness, the pains of 
the crucifixion, are now ended. After the pro- 
longed and agonizing struggles Christ's soul finds 
peace, and the enveloping clouds are riven by 
rays of light. This new mental condition is in- 
dicated by his words, " Father, into thy hands I 
commend my spirit," and by the last brief utter- 
ance which fell from his lips, " It is finished." 
These are words of deepest significance. 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 211 

What is finished? Not simply his physical and 
mental suffering, and not merely his earthly life 
among men. The word translated " finished " 
means accomplished, not ended but fulfilled. It 
Is the same word which was used just before, 
when It says, *' Jesus knowing that all things were 
now accomplished, that the Scripture might be 
fulfilled, said ' I thirst' " Christ's life, In all Its 
manifestations and experiences, was the accom- 
plishment of an eternal purpose which culminated 
on the cross, was the fulfillment of many distinct 
prophecies which had been spoken by God's serv- 
ants In the long ages, and was the completion of 
an ordained plan for the salvation of the world. 
This was what Christ meant when He said, " It 
is finished, or accomplished." This was the basis 
of his peace. He looked upon a finished work, 
a completed mission, a divine service for hu- 
manity. In which nothing had been left undone, 
In which there had been no failure, no omission, 
no Incompleteness. 

"Life's work well done, 
Life's race well run, 
Life's victory won, 
Then cometh peace." 

And this It was that let light through the dense, 
almost impenetrable darkness that enveloped the 
cross. He who had just before cried In words 



212 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

fraught with strange, mysterious meaning, " My 
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me I " 
now says in loving, filial confidence, " Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit." 

Let us think for a few moments of what Christ 
meant when He uttered those final words, "It is 
accomplished." The Scriptures frequently as- 
cribe the coming of Christ into the world and his 
mission of salvation to the gracious and eternal 
purpose of God. Christ's advent was no after- 
thought. Christ's crucifixion was no unforeseen 
tragedy of local significance. To make the Chris- 
tian religion an affair of the first century of the 
Christian era, or the natural evolution of the re- 
ligious thinking of the Jewish race is to rob it of 
its divine, its heaven-born, its God-born origin, 
and to deny to it its repeated and exalted claims. 
Back of the cross, and back of the life, and back 
of the advent of Jesus Christ stood the purpose 
and the grace of the Almighty. Calvary was 
planned in the council chamber of Heaven. Are 
we not told that " God so loved the world that 
He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish but have ever- 
lasting life?" Did not Jesus say, "I came not 
to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent 
me," and as He approached the end of his life. 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 213 

did He not declare, "I have finished the work 
which Thou gavest me to do " ? 

Christ's ministry of grace and suffering, from 
beginning to end, from Bethlehem to Calvary, was 
the fulfillment of a preconceived programme. 
Peter on the Day of Pentecost told the crucifiers of 
Christ that He was delivered to them according 
to " the determinate counsel and foreknowledge 
of God," which however did not relieve them of 
their responsibility and guilt, for they had taken 
Him, and " by wicked hands had crucified and 
slain Him." Christianity is older than the Chris- 
tian era, yes, older even than the human race. 
Christ was '* the Lamb slain from before the 
foundation of the world." The message of the 
gospel is God's message, clothed with divine au- 
thority and grace and power. When Christ hung 
upon the cross of Calvary his soul found rest in 
the thought that the eternal purpose of the Father 
was at last accomplished. 

But more than that; all along through the ages 
that purpose had found expression i;i numerous 
prophetic utterances and in significant rites and 
symbols. Beginning in the garden where man 
fell, and continuing with little interruption until 
the last prophet had spoken for God, the hopes 
of men were pointed to the coming Saviour. The 
books we call the Old Testament, which contain 



214 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

the sacredly preserved records of God's dealings 
with his ancient people, are all aglow with 
promises of a divine Deliverer, who should 
" preach deliverance to the spiritually captive, the 
opening of the prison to them that are bound, and 
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Be- 
tween three and four hundred distinct prophecies. 
Interpreted as referring to Christ by Christ him- 
self and his apostles, and by the devout scholar- 
ship of the world, point to his birth, to his spirit, 
to his character, to his mission, to his sufferings 
and their purpose, and to his death and resurrec- 
tion. Christ's portrait was drawn, his mission 
foretold, his character portrayed, his biography 
outlined, before He entered Mary's humble home 
in far Judea. Christ recognized the portrait and 
bore witness to its genuineness and accuracy, say- 
ing again and again, " That the Scriptures may be 
fulfilled," " These are they which testify of me." 
To the sorrowing and disappointed disciples, 
mourning over their crucified and buried Master 
He said, " Ought not Christ to have suffered these 
things and to enter Into his glory? And begin- 
ning at Moses and all the prophets He expounded 
unto them in all the Scriptures the things concern- 
ing Himself." " One jot or one tittle," He said, 
" shall not pass away till all be fulfilled." 

The Old Testament and the New Testament 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 215 

stand or fall together. They are bound together 
by the living personality of Him who was Son 
of God and Son of Man, child of prophecy and 
subject of history. Prophecy points forward to 
reality, and reality answers back to prophecy. As 
has been said, " The New Testament is concealed 
In the Old, and the Old Testament is revealed in 
the New." Neither can be adequately under- 
stood without the other. If one is the lock, the 
other is the key. If one is the image in the 
mirror, the other is the glorious form and face. 
If one is the blessed hope and longing, the other 
is the full and perfect realization. If one is the 
bud, the other is the consummate flower. If one 
is the voice of God by his ancient prophets, the 
other is the Word of God made flesh in his Son 
Jesus Christ our Lord. And so the suffering 
Christ could say peacefully at last, when He 
thought of the long line of splendid prophecy 
stretching through the ages, with which He was 
perfectly familiar, " It Is accomplished." 

But once more. God's eternal purpose being 
fulfilled, and the ancient prophecies to the mi- 
nutest detail being also fulfilled, Christ could now 
look upon his mission to earth for the revelation 
of God's grace and the salvation of lost men as 
fully accomplished. He had the peace which 
comes from the consciousness of a perfect life 



2i6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

and a completed service. He had left nothing 
undone. He had failed at no point. His cru- 
cifixion by which He had offered Himself a sacri- 
fice for the sins of the world, was the culmination 
and the crowning of his life of sinlessness and 
self-sacrifice, just as his resurrection would be the 
crowning of it all, when He should be " declared 
to be the Son of God with power." He could now 
say, " Now lettest Thou thy Son depart in peace, 
for I have accomplished and made known thy 
salvation. Thou canst now be just and the justi- 
fier of all who repent and believe. Whosoever 
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be 
saved." The way is now open from earth to 
heaven. The method of the world's salvation is 
now perfected, and needs no amendment or sup- 
plement. All the moral and spiritual conditions 
have been met. The provisions are ample for all 
nations and for all ages of the world. The 
shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ shall fall with 
healing power upon every land and to the last 
syllable of recorded time. *' Enough for each, 
enough for all, enough forevermore." And so 
Christ could now say to his disciples, " Go ye, go 
ye into all the world and preach my Gospel to 
every creature," the unchangeable Gospel of God's 
infinite love, of which the cross shall be the per- 
fect and enduring symbol. This was the supreme 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 217 

element in Christ's satisfaction. He became a 
perfect Saviour, able to save to the utmost all that 
come unto God by Him. 

Christ's words were, indeed, words of divinest 
wisdom and truth, and have enriched the thought, 
the faith and the literature of the world. All 
students of philosophy and ethics and religion will 
ever sit at his feet. '' No man ever spake like 
this Man." But Christ was more than a teacher. 
His spirit and life were absolutely perfect, with- 
out stain or flaw, able to bear the closest and even 
the hostile scrutiny of men, and to receive the 
full commendation of God, illustrating the highest 
morality and the divinest purity. He was " the 
brightness of the Father's glory and the express 
image of his person." He was pronounced 
" holy, harmless and undefiled, and separate from 
sinners," that is. He constituted a class by Him- 
self, the very image of Deity, the typical, the 
unparalleled Man. Conscious of his moral in- 
tegrity He could challenge the whole world, 
without fear of contradiction, " Which of you con- 
vinceth me of sin?" Yet Christ was more than 
an example of righteous obedience to the holy and 
perfect law of God. If that was all He was. He 
would have been no Saviour for sinners, but only 
a new and higher law of life, a perfect mirror to 
reveal human imperfection and shortcomings and 



2i8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

guilt, a holy Judge whose words would be only 
words of condemnation for us all. 

Christ laid special emphasis upon his suffer- 
ings and death as the supreme evidence of the 
forgiving grace of God and his own Saviourhood, 
and as providing the sure basis of all hope of per- 
fect character and of eternal life and blessedness. 
'' Ought not Christ to have suffered these things? " 
" The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." 
" The Son of Man came not to be ministered 
unto but to minister, and to give his life a ran- 
som for many." " And I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth (on the cross) will draw all men unto 
me." Here was the magnetic power, the divine 
attraction, the resistless charm of the Son of God. 
Here was the judgment, and at the same time the 
atonement, of human guilt. Here was the all- 
conquering grace of the Almighty. Here was the 
sure foundation of the world's immortal hope. A 
year without passion week would be an empty 
mockery in the calendar of the Christian church; 
passion week without Good Friday would be pow- 
erless in the appeal to God or to men. 

When the apostle writing to the Hebrews said, 
" Jesus was made a little lower than the angels 
for the suffering of death . . . that He by the 
grace of God should taste death for every man," 
he proclaimed the sufferings and death of the Son 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 219 

of God to be the end, the object, the purpose of 
his humlHation and mission to earth, the ordained 
completion of his earthly ministry, the crowning 
act of his redemptive work. And when he added, 
" For it became Him ... in bringing many sons 
unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation 
perfect through sufferings," he referred not to 
Christ's personal character, as is sometimes er- 
roneously supposed, for the moral character of 
Christ was absolutely sinless and needed no per- 
fecting, but he referred unquestionably to his 
official character. He was made a perfect 
Saviour, the victorious Captain of our salvation, 
by his sufferings and death on the cross of Cal- 
vary. And so Christ '' endured the cross, de- 
spising the shame, for the joy that was set be- 
fore Him." He put Himself under the great law 
of life and productiveness. '^ The hour is come 
that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall 
into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if 
it die it bringeth forth much fruit." This is the 
ordained, the heaven-prescribed condition to which 
Christ submitted. First the cross and the shame, 
then the crown of joy and the offered salvation; 
first the buried seed and then the abundant har- 
vest; first the agony and death and then the peace 
of an assured and world-wide victory. As the 



220 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Saviour at that final moment looked upon his fin- 
ished work, and saw the strong foundation now 
laid for the spiritual temple of believing souls, 
Himself being the chief corner stone, and beheld 
In prophetic vision the great multitude of those 
who in all lands and ages should accept his 
invitation, and trust in his redeeming blood, one 
can almost hear Him say calmly, peacefully, tri- 
umphantly, " It is accomplished." 

And such peace of soul had for its accompani- 
ment " the light that never shone on land or sea." 
The darkness which had grown denser and denser, 
is now broken. After a starless night the dawn 
flashes up the eastern sky. The golden light Is 
the light of the Father's countenance in loving 
approval, whose words of endorsement, heard at 
the beginning and then again at the middle of 
Christ's public ministry, " This Is my beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased," we may well be- 
lieve fell softly on Jesus' ear at this time also. 
When Christ said trustingly " Father," the Father 
smiled approvingly, " My Son." It is the light 
of the upper home and the many mansions, where 
no night Is, because no sin or sorrow enters there. 
It is the light of that Ineffable glory which Christ 
had with the Father before the world was, and 
(may we not say it?) the light of that greater 
glory which is to be, when love's redeeming work 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 221 

is done, when the cross and passion of Christ have 
borne their legitimate and promised fruit, and 
when the children of light shall all be gathered 
within the walls of that heavenly city of which 
the apostle John says, '* It had no need of the 
sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the 
glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the 
light thereof, and the nations of them which are 
saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings 
of the earth do bring their glory and honor into 
it." Then will our risen and glorified Saviour 
say with a new emphasis, " It is accomplished." 

The cross of Christ can never be repeated or 
duplicated. In its sacrificial relation to divine 
law and human guilt it stands alone. Christ was 
both priest and sacrifice. He offered Himself 
once for all. ^' After He had offered one sacrifice 
for sins forever He sat down on the right hand 
of God." Yet we are told that in some true sense, 
even in his sufferings, Christ is an example for 
his followers. " Because Christ also suffered for 
us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow 
his steps," language which means as the context 
clearly shows, that the spirit which Christ mani- 
fested in his supreme sufferings, the spirit of 
meekness, patience and unmurmuring submissive- 
ness, is to be manifested by his disciples in the 
lesser sufferings which they may be called to en- 



222 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

dure. And again Paul says to the Colossians, In 
striking language, " Who now rejoice in my suf- 
ferings for you, and fill up that which is behind 
of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for his 
body's sake, which is the church." The progress 
of Christ's kingdom is to be accomplished by the 
consecration and the self-sacrifice of those who 
bear his name. The spirit of the cross must enter 
into all true, acceptable and successful life. He 
who would follow Christ and carry on the work 
of Christ, must take up his cross and follow after 
Christ. As Lightfoot says with an intelligent ap- 
preciation of the apostle's words, " The church 
is built up by repeated acts of self-denial in suc- 
cessive generations. They continue the work 
which Christ began." They fill up that measure 
of service and self-sacrifice and suffering which 
the sufferings of Christ have left for those who 
come after Him to do. But as Lightfoot con- 
tinues, '' The idea of expiation or satisfaction Is 
wholly absent from the passage." The true fol- 
lowers of Christ who are carrying on their hearts 
the burden of the world's redemption, are so 
identified with Christ that their sufferings are his 
sufferings, and their work is the continuation of 
the work which He inaugurated, and so they come 
to know " the fellowship of his sufferings " as 
well as " the power of his resurrection." 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 223 

Is this the ordinary Christian experience? Do 
we know Christ as a suffering Saviour? Is his 
cross so wrought Into our lives that when we 
come to the end of life his peace shall be our 
peace, and his light shall be our light? If we 
would know Christ In his exaltation we must know 
Him in his humiliation. To rejoice with Him in 
his glory we must watch with Him in the garden 
and weep with Him at the cross. No story could 
be more graphic or more pathetic than the story 
of Christ's last days on earth, the clear vision of 
the cross, the deepening shadows on his sensitive 
spirit, the scorn and rejection of men, and the 
unbroken darkness which rested down upon Cal- 
vary's summit and its expiring sufferer. Surely, 
we say, He became for us " a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief." But have our hearts been 
stirred within us? Have the emotions of peni- 
tence, of sympathetic appreciation, of gratitude, 
of love and devotion been kindled in our souls? 
Shall we go forth from such meditations to a larger 
service of self-denial for Him who kept nothing 
back, but loved us unto death? Is not our re- 
ligion too often coldly intellectual, reaching not to 
the deeper sensibilities of the spirit, and producing 
no permanent results In the conduct and life? 
How calm and cool we are, and apparently un- 
moved, while we think of the great Son of God 



224 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

pouring out his life on the cross! Do we not 
wickedly repress and stifle our emotions, if we 
have any? We are absorbed in our petty cares 
and pleasures, and think little of the sinless, suf- 
fering Christ and the supreme tragedy of human 
history, which was enacted for us. We talk of 
the common trials and burdens of life as if they 
were " crosses." It is a pitiful travesty of the 
word. The cross is the symbol of intense suffer- 
ing, of total self-sacrifice, of the pouring out of 
life unto death. And so we come to measure the 
great cross of Christ with its immeasurable wealth 
of meaning and its unspeakable agony by the in- 
significant " crosses " of our personal experience, 
as we call them. 

We may not have fallen so low in spiritual dis- 
cernment and in religious fervor as the England 
of the eighteenth century, of which an historian 
says, " The Church as a whole, at this period, was 
cold and its teaching rationalistic. The living and 
present Christ seemed to be left out of its theology. 
The necessity of conversion was not brought home 
to the people. Enthusiasm or zeal was repressed. 
The Archbishop of Canterbury warned Heber, 
setting out on his glorious missionary career in In- 
dia, to put down enthusiasm. It was, we read, an 
age of artificial formality, of self-satisfied enlight- 
enment, of material prosperity and lethargy. Like 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 225 

a malarious fog, It crept Into the church, and laid 
Its cold hand upon her heart." 

I do not forget the hopeful movements of our 
day, the young people's uprising, the splendid ac- 
tivity of many Christian women, the effort to 
spread the missionary spirit which Is the vital 
spirit of Christianity, Indeed without, which there 
Is no Christianity, and " the men and religion for- 
ward movement," In which a part of the follow- 
ers of Christ are enlisted. But Christ died alike 
for all. His sufferings were endured for all. His 
cross makes Its appeal to every sincere and thought- 
ful heart. His dying love should kindle respon- 
sive love In every living, breathing soul. " We 
love Him because He first loved us " ; equal love 
for souls equally needy demands a response 
measured only by Individual ability and capacity. 
We are apt to lose ourselves In the multitude. 
We make the love and the sufferings of Christ so 
general In their scope as to weaken the force of 
the Individual application. The application should 
be strongly and tremendously personal, as at the 
conversion so all through the Christian life and 
experience. It Is not enough to say " God so 
loved the world." No man ever yet found the 
peace of forgiveness who did not feel the flame 
of God's love focused by the lens of Christ's cross 
on his own soul. And no man ever yet accom- 



226 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

pllshed much for the kingdom of God, who did 
not live under the ever present inspiration and 
resistless impulse of the apostolic conviction, 
" who loved me and gave himself for me." This 
burning conviction, this personal appropriation of 
the benefit of Christ's passion, will keep the heart 
glowing with a true, self-sacrificing, consistent, un- 
dying devotion to the divine Lamb of Calvary. 

We sing with some degree of warmth, it may be, 
Dr. Holmes' fine hymn, 

" Grant us thy truth to make us free, 
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee, 
Till all thy living altars claim 
One holy light, one heavenly flame." 

And then before the echo of our song dies upon 
the ear, we lapse into a state of almost refrigera- 
tor coldness and forgetfulness and inactivity. Our 
faith often finds sympathetic utterance and con- 
firmation in our Christian hymns, which are filled 
with the music of redeeming love. Our beliefs 
and our aspirations, our creeds and our hopes are 
wedded in the songs of the sanctuary. With sub- 
dued hearts and tearful eyes we sing, 

"We may not know, we cannot tell 
What pains He had to bear; 
But we believe It was for us 
He hung and suffered there." 

Do we honestly believe it, and does that belief in- 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 227 

flame our love, and move us on to ever fresh purity 
of life and constant acts of self-sacrificing and 
loyal devotion? We sing tenderly, 

" Oh, dearly, dearly has He loved, 

And we must love Him too, 
And trust in his redeeming blood. 

And try his works to do." 

Do we honestly try, and are our efforts crowned 
with any degree of success, so that we can truly 
affirm that " we know Him and the power of his 
resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, 
being made conformable unto his death ^'f Oh, 
that our meditations upon the passion of Christ 
may kindle in our hearts a holy, a burning passion 
to be like Christ, to make known Christ, and to 
know and to do the will of our Father who is in 
heaven, as Christ did ! May we strive to live up 
to the standard of our confession expressed in our 
hymns. May our Christian songs sing themselves 
into our lives. 

It is sometimes said, as if it was a sign and evi- 
dence of progress, that the emphasis to-day in the 
Christian world is not upon faith but upon life, 
not upon doctrine but upon practice. This re- 
veals a strange, dangerous and culpable forgetful- 
ness of the incontrovertible fact that Christian life 
is born and nourished by Christian faith, and noth- 
ing else, that behind all acceptable practice and 



228 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

sustained activity there must be a firm and intel- 
ligent and loving grasp of the vital and essential 
doctrines of Christianity, viz., the supernatural 
birth and lordship of Jesus Christ, his miracle- 
working power, his sacrificial death on the cross 
and his bodily resurrection. The rationalistic 
periods of history have been the dead periods of 
history. The churches that have ignored or de- 
nied the true nature and mission of the Son of 
God, have been the Inactive, non-missionary, fruit- 
less and stagnant churches. It is evermore true 
that " as a man thinketh so is he." A decay of 
faith will inevitably result in the weakening of 
life. You cannot keep the stream full, if you dry 
up the fountain. Power will not long continue if 
you break connection with the dynamo. A living 
faith in the sinless and crucified Son of God is the 
only sufficient inspiration to personal and church 
activity and spiritual success. " By this sign con- 
quer." 

Dr. Gore, Bishop of Oxford, protesting against 
the present tendency to belittle faith in essential 
truth while seeking to meet the demand for an en- 
larged outward activity, declares substantially, 
" We are not going to enrich our action by the 
Impoverishment of our thought. A skimmed the- 
ology will not produce a more intimate philan- 
thropy. We are not going to become more ar- 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 229 

dent lovers of men by the cooling of our love for 
God." And Dr. J. H. Jowett in his Yale Lec- 
tures, discussing the multiplication of organiza- 
tions to the neglect of " the vital, the Inspirational, 
the divine," says, " We may be absorbed in de- 
vising machinery, and careless about the power 
which is to make it go. That is our peril." 

The cross of Christ must always be the distin- 
guishing symbol of the Christian religion, as it 
has been for nineteen centuries, conspicuous In its 
architecture, central in its creed and in its preach- 
ing, proclaimed in its two permanent rites, vital 
and vitalizing In Its life, the secret of its progress 
and the ordained promise of Its final conquest and 
world-wide triumph. " God forbid that I should 
glory," exclaimed the spirit-enlightened apostle, 
" save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." A 
sad day will it be for the Christian church, if It 
ever loses its relish for such hymns as these : 

"In the cross of Christ I glory," 

"Rock of ages cleft for me," 

" My faith looks up to Thee, 
Thou Lamb of Calvary, 
Saviour divine." 

President E. Y. Mullins has said, " In every 
age of Christian power and aggressiveness the 
cross has been prominent. Christianity possesses 



230 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

an unrivaled view of God and the universe, a 
matchless system of ethics. It would probably 
live and eventually overcome all other religions 
for these reasons alone. But its most distinctive 
characteristic, the one thing which has always 
given it supreme regenerating power in the indi- 
vidual and In society, is its crucified Redeemer. 
Liberal Christianity has popularity and ethics and 
culture; evangelical Christianity has transforming 
power. It was the message of the cross that gave 
Paul his power; it is the cross that lends power 
to the preacher to-day; and it is probable that the 
message of the cross, truly believed and sincerely 
preached, will continue to be the supreme power 
in Christian history to the end." 

We shall all come down to the end of life, as 
did Christ. May we come down to it in peace 
and in light, as He did? We shall not be able to 
say then, " I have finished the work, which Thou 
gavest me to do," for all human work and achieve- 
ment are marred by weaknesses and imperfections. 
As we take the backward look we shall be com- 
pelled to confess, notwithstanding our most stren- 
uous endeavor, " We have done the things we 
ought not to have done, and have left undone the 
things we ought to have done." Our peace will 
not be the peace that comes from entire satisfac- 
tion with the work we have accomplished and a 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 231 

consciousness that we have lived a life of perfect 
obedience to the will of God. Yet we may have 
the peace of Christ in our hearts, the peace that 
comes from fellowship with Him, and a participa- 
tion in the rich blessings of his purchased salva- 
tion. He made peace, we are told, *' by the blood 
of his cross," and is now made unto all sincere be- 
lievers " wisdom and righteousness, sanctification 
and redemption," so that we can sing in fullest 
confidence, 

"Thou, O Christ, art all I want; 
More than all in Thee I find." 

The fact and the method are clearly revea^ed. 
*' Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace 
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Even 
now amid the storm and stress of life's experiences 
we have foretastes of that peace which passes 
all understanding, which is satisfying in its nature 
and eternal in its duration. Surely Christ did not 
mock his sorrowing disciples when He said to 
them, " Peace I leave with you; my peace I give 
unto you." With the calm assurance of a tri- 
umphant faith the great apostle cried out, " Who 
shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? 
Shall God who justifieth? Who is he that con- 
demneth ? Is it Christ who died, yea, rather, who 
is risen again, and is even at the right hand of 
God, and also maketh intercession for us? " Such 



232 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

questions bear their absurdity on their face. If 
the Father justifies, and the Son who died and 
rose again, intercedes for the disciple, his safety 
at the hour of death is assured. His sins are com- 
pletely forgiven. They are, as It were, blotted 
out, and the condemning consciousness of his sin 
Is utterly silenced. The sting of death is sin, but 
if Christ bore the believer's sin on the cross, the 
sting is extracted. Reconciliation has taken the 
place of condemnation. " There is now no con- 
demnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." This 
is the mystery of Christ and the glory of his cross, 
revealed in the experience of every trusting dis- 
ciple. Christ bore his sins; and he shares Christ's 
peace. It is a double fellowship. 

But his peace rests not only upon what Christ 
has wrought for him, but upon his continued love 
and ever living interest. " Whom He loves He 
loves to the end." Nothing, not even death with 
all its power, " shall be able to separate him from 
the love of God which is In Christ Jesus our 
Lord." Christ's earthly mission was accom- 
plished; but his heavenly service still goes on, and 
will go on until the last disciple Is safely sheltered 
in the heavenly home. The dying victim of Cal- 
vary has become the ever living and victorious 
intercessor for his believing and accepted follow- 
ers. " And so It shall come to pass that at even- 



PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 233 

Ing time It shall be light." Every humble saint 
as he closes his eyes upon the familiar scenes of his 
earthly sojourn, and looks through the open por- 
tal of the mansion prepared for him, can calmly 
say as did Stephen, the proto-martyr, " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." 



CHAPTER V 

MRS. EMMA WILLARD, THE PIONEER IN THE 
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

ALL great movements have their humble be- 
ginnings. All reforms educational, moral 
and religious can be traced back to some inspired 
soul or souls, gifted with wisdom In advance of 
their time, endowed with a courage which scorns 
all thought of defeat, whose dreams become con- 
victions, whose desires assume the nature of In- 
domitable purposes, who conquer success in spite 
of indifference, ridicule and opposition. All ad- 
vance in the onward march of civilization has been 
led by pioneers who pushed out into the untried, 
and by their inspiring example have extended the 
boundaries of human effort and knowledge and 
happiness. 

The higher education of women Is a modern 
movement, and had its beginnings within the mem- 
ory of men now living. It was a reform against 
long continued neglect and unaccountable preju- 
dice. In the direction of the completeness and exal- 
tation of human life, personal, domestic and social. 

234 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 235 

It has been a conspicuous element In the ad- 
vancing civilization of the nineteenth century, and 
has given a distinction and a glory to It, which 
nothing else has. It Is doubtful If anything has 
occurred during the last hundred years more In- 
dicative of the progress of our time than the of- 
fering to young women of educational advantages 
equal to those provided for young men. I wish to 
call attention to the beginning of this great move- 
ment, and to the name and service of one, who 
must ever be held in honor as the richly endowed, 
consecrated and successful pioneer in the higher 
education of woman. 

It will not be forgotten by those familiar with 
English literature that Daniel Defoe, writing In 
1697, In "An Essay upon Projects," proposed 
among other things " An Academy for Women," 
which has been called " surprisingly modern " in 
Its views and suggestions. He opened his plan 
with the following generous confession: " I have 
often thought of it as one of the most barbarous 
customs in the world, considering us as a civilized 
and Christian country, that we deny the ad- 
vantages of learning to women. We reproach the 
sex every day with folly and Impertinence, while 
I am confident, had they the advantages of edu- 
cation equal to us, they would be guilty of less than 
ourselves." 



236 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

After discussing the question of woman's ca- 
pacity and native endowment, he presented his 
plan of having one plain building " in a form by 
itself, as well as in a place by itself, the gardens 
being walled in and surrounded with a large moat, 
and but one entrance." Admission to the acad- 
emy should be voluntary on the part of the stu- 
dents, and also continuance in it. " An act of Par- 
liament should make it felony, without clergy, for 
any man to enter by force or fraud into the house." 
For the school thus secluded and guarded, he pro- 
posed a curriculum which was quite full. Including 
languages, history and literature, as well as music 
and dancing. Indeed he says, '* To such whose 
genius would lead them to it I would deny no 
sort of learning." One such academy at least he 
would have " in every county in England, and 
about ten for the city of London." He closed 
the essay with the following paragraph, " I need 
not enlarge upon the loss the defect of education 
is to the sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary 
practice; it is a thing that will be more easily 
granted than remedied. This chapter is but an 
essay at the thing; and I refer the practice to those 
happy days, if ever they shall be, when men shall 
be wise enough to mend it." 

Those happy days were slow in coming. One 
hundred and twenty-four years passed away, be- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 237 

fore a successful attempt was made to mend the 
condition Defoe deplored, and made not by the 
wisdom of men, but by the enlightened zeal of a 
woman. 

In the year 1821 there was founded in the city 
of Troy, N. Y., a Female Seminary, so called, by 
Mrs. Emma Willard, for the avowed purpose of 
furnishing to young women an education higher, 
broader and more complete than any then open to 
them, or hitherto supposed to be necessary for 
them. This Seminary still exists, and for ninety- 
two years has sought to carry out under various 
successful administrations the noble purpose of its 
gifted founder and first principal, though not at- 
tracting to itself so much attention from the out- 
side world during the later part of its history as 
during the earlier, for reasons largely external to 
itself, notably because of the growing recognition 
and triumph of its purpose, and of the existence 
and multiplication of similar and larger institu- 
tions in the country. 

At its beginning this Seminary was a new move- 
ment, an untried experiment, and was looked upon 
by many minds with indifference and unbelief, and 
by not a few with open hostility; and the devoted 
founder was regarded as a dreamer or a fanatic. 
It is not easy for us to put ourselves back into the 
educational status even at the beginning of the last 



238 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

century. Indeed we are quite likely to be de- 
ceived by the eloquent perorations of those, who 
laud the spirit, plans and achievements of the early 
settlers of this western world, which are often 
*' without fact or reason." 

Hon. Andrew S. Draper, Superintendent of Ed- 
ucation in the State of New York, speaking of 
these rose-colored representations, once remarked 
facetiously, that from them one would expect to 
find a schoolhouse standing on Plymouth Rock 
the morning after the landing of the Pilgrim 
Fathers. The truth is that even the system of 
common schools was a matter of slow growth in 
New England as well as in the New Netherlands, 
and only comparatively recently has it attained the 
scope and completeness which it now has. When 
the nineteenth century dawned, after a century and 
three quarters of struggle, hardship and poverty, 
of the conquest of untamed nature, of warfare 
with the Indians, and with the mother country in 
the long and exhausting struggle for national in- 
dependence, there were hardly more than twenty- 
five institutions called Colleges in the country, and 
these were little superior to modern high schools. 
They were all of course for young men. These 
first educational institutions had in view primarily 
the preparation of candidates for the Christian 
ministry and the so-called learned professions. 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 239 

The general education for young men was exceed- 
ingly meager and limited, while that for young 
women was distressingly so. In many cities a 
high school supported by public taxation had to 
fight for an existence, and a high school or a 
Latin school distinctively for girls was long and 
bitterly opposed in the Athens of America, on the 
ground of increased taxation and declared use- 
lessness. 

Mrs. John Adams, near the close of the eight- 
eenth century, said, " Female education in the best 
families went no farther than writing and arith- 
metic, and in some few and rare instances, music 
and dancing." The question of woman's sphere 
was rarely or never discussed in those days, either 
because it was supposed to be so narrow that it 
was hardly worth discussing, or because it was 
looked upon as fixed and determined by the de- 
crees of nature and the Almighty, and therefore 
unalterable and unimprovable. 

Such was the condition at the beginning of the 
last century, and well on towards its middle, and 
on the other side of the Atlantic as well as on this. 
Indeed America has always been far in advance 
of the Mother Country on the subject of free, 
popular education, and is to-day, an education free 
to all regardless of condition, sex or religious test. 
It is only within a few years that the restriction 



240 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

was removed from the great English Universi- 
ties, and Dissenters admitted to their privileges, 
and the Nonconformists are still engaged in a bit- 
ter struggle for their rights, and suffering arrest, 
loss of goods and imprisonment for the sake of 
conscience and principle. However backward our 
own country was in its sentiments, and in making 
equal educational provision for its sons and its 
daughters, no other nation was in advance of it. 
The general belief, a hundred years ago and less, 
as to the sphere of lovely woman found expres- 
sion in the familiar couplet, 

" To eat strawberries, sugar and cream, 
Sit on a cushion and sew up a seam," 

a belief which a seeker may find still in districts 
not wholly rural. 

The following rules were adopted in the estab- 
lishment of a grammar school in New Haven in 
1684: " For ye instruction of hopeful youth in 
ye Latin tongue and other learned languages soe 
far as to prepare such youths for ye Coledge and 
public service of ye country in Church and Com- 
monwealth. . . . And all girls be excluded as Im- 
proper and inconsistent with such a Grammer 
Schoole as ye law enjoins, & is ye Designe of this 
Settlement." 

President Charles F. Thwing, in his volume en- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 241 

titled " A History of Higher Education In Amer- 
ica," makes the following confirmatory statement, 
" The education of women for two centuries had 
relation to their condition as wives and mothers. 
Their education was, like that life, simple, prosaic, 
narrow. The first President Dwight said, ' The 
employments of the women of New England are 
wholly domestic* Education, therefore, hardly 
extended beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. 
In Boston girls were not allowed to attend the pub- 
lic schools until the year 1790, and then their at- 
tendance was limited to the months of summer. 
Two years before, the town of Northampton voted 
not to be at any expense for schooling girls." 

To attempt to provide an advanced education 
for young women equal to that provided for young 
•men, was looked upon, at first, as a reform against 
nature, a quixotic dream. It was not a question 
of a few fathers considering the wisdom of edu- 
cating their daughters in the highest branches of 
human knowledge, but it was a general question, 
viz., whether any fathers should run the risk of 
allowing their daughters to pursue the advanced 
studies of the College and the University, lest 
they should be unsphered, If not practically un- 
sexed, and so unfitted for woman's practical duties 
and ordained position In life. 

Professor William Seymour Tyler has vividly 



242 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

portrayed the strange opposition to the higher 
education of women In the following words: 
" The objections to this idea of equalizing the ed- 
ucational advantages of the two sexes were many 
and various, and not always consistent with each 
other or consonant with the courtesy due to the 
gentler sex. It was an innovation uncalled for, 
unheard of until now since the foundation of the 
world, and unthought of now except by a few 
strong minded women and radical men, who would 
level all distinctions and overturn the foundations 
of the family, of society, of Church, and of the 
State. It was unnatural, unphllosophical, unscrlp- 
tural, unpractical and impracticable, unfeminlne 
and anti-Christian; In short all the epithets in the 
dictionary that begin with un and in and anti 
were hurled against and heaped upon it. . . . It 
would be the entering wedge to woman's preach- 
ing, practicing, lecturing, voting, ruling, buying 
and selling, doing everything that men do, and per- 
haps doing it better than men do, and overstock- 
ing all the trades and professions. At the same 
time it was Insisted that such occupations as math- 
ematics and philosophy were not suited to the 
tastes and capacities of women; they did not want 
them, and would not undertake them ; and if they 
did, they would ruin their health. Impair their 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 243 

gentleness, delicacy, modesty and refinement, un- 
sex them, and unfit them for their proper sphere." 

Women's legal condition was defined by Black- 
stone in his " Commentaries " in these words, " By 
marriage the husband and wife are one person in 
law; that is, the very being or legal existence of 
the woman is suspended during marriage, or at 
least is incorporated and consolidated into that 
of her husband." 

The opinion of woman's subordination to man 
prevailed among the most advanced thinkers and 
idealists at the close of the eighteenth century. 
Rousseau declared the object of woman in crea- 
tion to be this, " Women are specially made to 
please men. All their education should be rela- 
tive to men. To please them, to be useful to 
them, to make themselves loved and honored by 
them, to bring them up when young, to take care 
of them when grown up, to counsel and console 
them, to make their lives agreeable and pleasant 
— these, in all ages, have been the duties of 
wom.en, and it is for these duties they should be 
educated from infancy." 

Dr. Lyman Abbott, commenting on these quo- 
tations, says, " This conception that woman was 
made for man, that in marriage she lost her per- 
sonal identity, and became merged and consoli- 



244 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

dated with the man, entered Into and determined 
the popular ideal of woman's education." 

If the higher education of woman was a reform 
against nature, this was the reform, which Emma 
Willard inaugurated, and the splendid task to 
which she applied herself, with all the energy of 
her strong nature and all the resources of her cul- 
tivated mind. It is universally conceded that 
though other schools were established soon after 
hers, to her belongs the high honor of being the 
pioneer. 

The late George William Curtis In his scholarly 
oration, delivered at the twenty-fifth anniversary 
of the founding of Vassar College, quotes Sidney 
Smith as saying " that the immense disparity 
which existed between the knowledge of men and 
women admitted of no rational defense, because," 
said the sensible canon, " nature has been as 
bountiful of understanding to one sex as to the 
other." " While he was writing," says Mr. Cur- 
tis, " Mrs. Emma Willard, whose name should 
always be held In honor at Vassar, and at every 
similar Institution In the world, was improving the 
minds of young ladies at a school in Vermont, and 
a few years afterward founded upon the banks of 
the Hudson the Troy Female Seminary. This 
was a conspicuous advance in the scope and con- 
ception of such academies at that day. But the 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 245 

time was ripe for Mrs. WUlard, as it was for 
Columbus, and for every leader of civilization." 

This is high praise, coming from such a distin- 
guished source, which makes Mrs. Willard the 
Columbus of the new world of woman's oppor- 
tunity and development. Four hundred years ago 
the time may have been ripe for discovery, discov- 
ery may have been in the air, but to Columbus 
alone belongs the honor of having plucked the 
ripened fruit, of having sublimated the vaporous 
ether Into a solid continent, which ought In justice 
to be called in its entlreness to-day by his euphoni- 
ous name. Instead of his name being restricted to 
the western portion of the British possessions In 
North America. 

It Is no discredit to the Christian religion that 
the advent of its divine Founder took place ^' In 
the fullness of time," that then when prophetic 
voices, national conquests by Roman arms, uni- 
versal unrest and desire, and the perfection of the 
Greek tongue had put all things In readiness, He 
appeared and entered upon his sublime mission as 
the Teacher and Redeemer of the race. The 
preparation of the hour and the preparation and 
appearance of the chosen Instrument were both of 
divine Providence. At the end of the first quar- 
ter of the last century the hour had come for the 
enlargement of woman's sphere, for her full 



246 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

emancipation from the limitations which had so 
long encompassed her, for the clear assertion of 
the rights and possibilities of womanhood under 
the Christian dispensation, and Mrs. Willard was, 
under God, the woman for the hour, illustrating 
in herself very much of the ideal, which she per- 
sistently and persuasively held up for her sisters. 

Descended directly from a Puritan ancestry, 
which had its fountain head in this country in 
Rev. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut, broadened 
in her views and attainments by the liberal spirit 
of her father, who openly rebelled against the 
narrowness and oppression, which still lingered in 
his day, we find Miss Emma Hart (for that was 
her maiden name) at the early age of seventeen 
teaching her first school, and mistress of the school 
and of the situation, using the rod or pulling the 
teeth of her pupils as occasion required (though 
probably not giving to them the option as ex- 
pressed by the child's request to her mother, if she 
could not have her picture taken, might she have 
a tooth out), encouraging them to fidelity, self- 
respect and the love of study, independent in her 
methods, thorough in her work, exciting the ad- 
miration of the parents and the ambition of 
the children, and already catching glimpses of the 
scope, and giving promise of the success, of the 
work to which she was to devote her life. 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 247 

Passing from the little Connecticut village to 
the more advanced work and larger opportunities 
of her brief Vermont experience, her success was 
still more marked. Her marriage to Dr. Wil- 
lard, when she was twenty-two years of age, 
seemed for the moment to put an end to her brief 
career as an educator, and to blight all hopes which 
she or her friends may have cherished of enlarged 
usefulness and successful reform In this direction. 
But soon financial reverses came to her husband, 
and never were misfortunes more conspicuously 
overruled for the accomplishment of a great pur- 
pose, and the disappointment of one made to Issue 
In the benefit of a countless multitude. Smitten 
to the ground, not by dazzling light, but by exces- 
sive darkness and momentary blindness, she asked 
with devout and submissive spirit, " Lord, what 
wilt thou have me do?" Marriage was not to 
her the great end of life. Through It she secured 
the broader vision of life and duty. There 
flashed upon her mind, probably as never before, 
the needs of her own sex, the unjust disparity 
which existed In the prevailing provisions for the 
Intellectual culture of the youth of her time, the 
outline of the reform demanded, and her call In 
the providence of God to the leadership of the 
new movement. She understood and accepted 
the significance of the hour. She " was not dis- 



248 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

obedient to the heavenly vision." Life to her 
took on a grander purpose. She rose with true 
womanly courage, and undertook cheerfully and 
resolutely her appointed work as the apostle of 
the higher education of woman, the broader cul- 
ture, the elevation, the progress of her sex. 

In giving the chief place to Mrs. Willard In 
the advanced educational movement for young 
women, I do not forget the preparatory work of 
Miss Zllpah Grant at Ipswich Seminary, of Abi- 
gail Haseltine at Bradford Academy, of Miss 
Catherine Beecher at Hartford, and of Eli Thayer 
of the Oread Collegiate Institute at Worcester; 
nor do I forget the noble work of that other noble 
woman, Mary Lyon. But Mrs. Willard was 
born ten years before Mary Lyon, and the Troy 
Seminary antedated the South Hadley Seminary 
by sixteen years. Mrs. Willard was born Feb- 
ruary 23, 1787, and Miss Lyon, February 
28, 1797. It should be added that the pub- 
lic career of Mrs. Willard lasted almost a score 
of years longer than Miss Lyon's, and was much 
broader in its relations, although no higher in its 
purpose. 

It may be well at this point, now that the names 
of these two educators have been associated In our 
thought, to quote President Thwing's very just 
and discriminating characterization of them, con- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 249 

tamed In the volume already referred to. " It Is 
not a little significant that near the beginning of 
the period of the enlargement of the higher edu- 
cation and greater opportunity for women, stood 
two women embodying noble and diverse charac- 
teristics, movements and methods. The one em- 
bodied Intensity, and the other largeness. Mary 
Lyon stood for an Interpretation of life which Is 
still denominated Puritanism, and Emma Willard 
for an Interpretation optimistic and free. One 
declared that to do her duty was her great pur- 
pose, and the other regarded freedom of develop- 
ment as her great desire for humanity and herself. 
The one Interpreted religion as life, and the other 
sought to make life religious. One poured all of 
life Into religion, and caused Its conceptions and 
principles to become dominant. The other poured 
all of religion into life, seeking to give to life a 
symmetry more complete, a nobler sympathy, a 
finer enrichment, and a higher and holler aspira- 
tion." 

President Thwing goes on to say, *' Each of 
these two types embodies advantages and disad- 
vantages. Each Is subjected to perils. Intensity 
Is In peril of narrowness; liberality and largeness, 
of vagueness and looseness. . . . But both Miss 
Lyon and Mrs. Willard were largely saved from 
falling into the evils and weaknesses of their re 



250 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

spective methods. Each made a noble contribu- 
tion to the education of women, important in it- 
self and for the periods of their service, and which 
also bore the seeds of yet greater development." 
While conducting her school at Middlebury, 
Vt., Mrs. Willard projected the educational plans 
which she afterward carried out with such signal 
ability and success. By the character of her 
school, as well as by the publication and circulation 
of her advanced views on woman's education, she 
was already attracting to herself the attention of 
educators, and men prominent in business and 
political life. Her programme, formulated with 
great care and minuteness of detail, passed 
through edition after edition, and called forth 
wide approval and criticism. It contained the 
basis of her whole system of education, and 
by whatever name the school contemplated might 
be called, seminary or college, it was in all 
essential respects of college-grade, and has fur- 
nished the foundation of all distinctive colleges 
for young women. It had in view large public 
buildings, a library well supplied with books in all 
branches of knowledge, laboratories, philosophical 
apparatus, a large staff of teachers, a board of 
Trustees, and generous aid from the legislature 
of the State. The plan was too large, the en- 
terprise too expensive, to be carried on by any one 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 251 

person or by private benevolence — at least, in 
those days. It was a great public institution 
which she contemplated, and was designed to con- 
fer incalculable benefit upon society at large, upon 
every community, upon the State and the Nation, 
and therefore would be justified fully in making 
its appeal to the public treasury. 

By the advice of influential friends, Mrs. Wil- 
lard decided to make New York State the arena 
for her new and " lively experiment." A be- 
ginning was made at Waterford, and after two 
years the school was transferred to the more 
favorable location in the city of Troy, and was 
called " The Troy Female Seminary.'' This was 
under the shadow of the State capitol, only six 
miles away, from which Mrs. Willard hoped to 
receive practical sympathy and aid, as well as from 
other States, and even from the national Govern- 
ment at Washington. Then began the strenuous 
work of education and appeal, which she under- 
took single-handed, relying upon the obvious jus- 
tice of her cause, and its unquestionable reasona- 
bleness, to commend itself to the favorable judg- 
ment of thoughtful, public-spirited citizens of 
every rank. 

She prepared an able and extended memorial, 
and secured its presentation before legislatures. 
It attracted very wide attention. She solicited 



252 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

personally the cooperation of legislatures, of 
members of Congress, and of Presidents. She 
sought to create public sentiment, to overcome in- 
difference, to remove prejudice, to kindle en- 
thusiasm, and to secure private benefactions and 
State patronage. Hers was a work of agitation, 
in which reforms always begin. Her language, 
which was certainly not wanting in force or pre- 
cision, indicates the nature of the objections she 
met. In a letter she wrote, " I am gratified with 
your sentiments on female education, and I wish 
legislators thought as you and I do. They can 
;expend thousands for the education of male 
youths, but when was anything ever done by the 
public to promote that of females? And what is 
the reason of it? It is not because the expense 
Is valued, nor because fathers do not love their 
daughters as well as their sons. It is partly from 
inattention to the subject, and partly from the 
prejudice that if women's minds were cultivated 
they would forget their own sphere, and intrude 
themselves into that of men, . . . because a few 
individuals of masculine minds have forcibly 
broken through every Impediment, and rivaled the 
men even In their own department. . . . They 
might as well reason that because there Is now and 
then a brawny woman who can lift a barrel of 
cider (was that the kind of exercise customary 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 253 

among young ladies of the olden time?) her 
whole sex should be kept constantly within doors 
and not allowed to exercise, less if they should at- 
tain the full perfection of their strength, they 
would contest the prize upon the wrestling ground, 
or attempt to take the scythe and the hoe from 
the hands of men, and turn them into the kitchen.'^ 

Again she wrote, " I think the business of edu- 
cation is not to counteract the decision of nature, 
but to perfect ourselves in nature's plan." And 
again, " Education should seek to bring its sub- 
jects to the perfection of their moral, intellectual 
and physical nature, in order that they may be of 
the greatest possible use to themselves and others." 
And once more, " Another error is that it has been 
made the first object in educating our sex to pre- 
pare them to please the other. But reason and 
religion teach that we too are primary existences; 
that it is for us to move, to the orbit of our duty, 
around the holy center of perfection; the com- 
panions, not the satellites, of men." 

These are noble sentiments, marked by sanity, 
full of '' sweetness and light," and the wonder is 
that they did not win their way at once to the 
acceptance of every mind. Mrs. Willard scorned 
the idea that the higher education would unsex 
her sisters, or would educate them away from the 
simple, practical, homely duties of life. It was 



254 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

not to unfit them for their lot, and make them dis- 
contented with their environment; but it was to 
fit them to dignify every duty, to give them power 
over their environment, to make them better sis- 
ters, and wives, and mothers, and members of 
the social order, in a word, not to change their 
sphere, but to interpret it, and enlarge and en- 
rich it. What Margaret Fuller claimed near the 
middle of the last century as woman's birthright, 
viz., " the freedom, the religious and intelligent 
freedom of the universe, to use its means, to learn 
its secrets, as far as nature has enabled her," Mrs. 
Willard claimed in its second decade with equal 
earnestness and comprehensiveness of view, 
when the distinguished transcendentalist was but 
a child. 

The opposition to her reform sometimes dis- 
appointed Mrs, Willard, and sometimes aroused 
her righteous indignation; but never chilled the 
ardor of her purpose, or paralyzed the persist- 
ency of her effort. Men from whom she expected 
better things, withheld their sympathy, and legis- 
latures their patronage and support; but her spirit 
was undaunted, and her efforts were at last 
crowned with a splendid and far reaching success. 
The new location proved to be most favorable. 
To the intelligent and sympathetic citizens of Troy 
belongs the distinguishing honor of having cor- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 255 

dially welcomed the experiment, and of having 
furnished the opportunity and the means for the 
establishment of a Seminary for the higher edu- 
cation of young women, which became at the same 
time a model and an Inspiration, and in that city 
Mrs. Willard was enabled to furnish an illustra- 
tion of her plan, approximating at least her lofty 
ideal. 

It has been said that '' Mrs. Willard with all 
her peculiar pride of sex and desire to elevate 
women was far from being in sympathy with those 
women who early began the agitation of those 
intricate questions which pertain to ' women's 
rights,' by which is usually meant ' political 
rights.' " A brief extract from her reply to Miss 
Catherine Beecher, who had appealed to her to 
join certain ladies in Hartford in an organized 
movement to secure the " rights " of women, will 
indicate her views. 

*' Dear Madam: Sincerely do I regret that 
in the present instance of an appeal to act jointly 
with yourself and the highly respected ladles of 
Hartford, the case should be one In which my 
own opinion Is not coincident with yours and 
theirs. In reflecting on political subjects my 
thoughts are apt to take this direction; the only 
natural government on earth is that of the fam- 



256 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

ily, the only natural sovereign, the husband and 
father. Other just governments are these sov- 
ereigns confederated, that they may together the 
better secure the advantage of all their families 
combined." 

I 
As showing Mrs. Willard's native brightness 

and wit, which can co-exist with the most serious 

purpose of a strenuous life, a letter to a cousin 

accompanying a wedding present of a pair of 

stockings, may be quoted. 

*' To J. D. Willard, Esq. 

Dear Cousin, Herewith you will receive a 
present of a pair of woollen stockings, knit by my 
own hands, and be assured, dear Coz, that my 
friendship for you Is as warm as the material, 
active as the finger-work, and generous as the 
donation. But I consider this present as pecul- 
iarly appropriate on the occasion of your mar- 
riage. You will remark, firstly, that here are two 
Individuals united in one pair, who are to walk 
side by side, guarding against coldness, and giv- 
ing comfort as long as they last. The thread of 
their texture Is mixed, and so, alas, is the thread 
of life. In these, however, the white Is made 
to predominate, expressing my desire and confi- 
dence that thus It may be with the color of your 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 257 

lives. No black Is used, for I believe your lives 
will be wholly free from the black passions of 
wrath and jealousy. The darkest color here Is 
'blue, which Is excellent, when we do not make It 
too blue. 

Other appropriate thoughts rise to my mind In 
regarding these stockings. The most Indifferent 
subjects, when viewed by a mind In a suitable 
frame, may furnish Instructive Inferences, as salth 
the poet — 

"The iron dogs, the peat and tongs, 
The bellows that have leathern lungs, 
The fire, wood ashes, and the smoke, 
Do all to righteousness provoke." 

But to the subject. You will perceive that the 
tops of these stockings (by which I suppose court- 
ship to be represented) are seamed, and by means 
of seaming are drawn Into a pucker. But after- 
wards comes a time when the whole Is made plain, 
and continues so to the end and final toeing off. 
By this I wish you to take occasion to congratu- 
late yourself that you have now come to plain 
sailing. 

Again as the whole of these comely stockings 
was not made at once, but by the addition of one 
little stitch after another, put In with skill and 
discretion, until the whole presents the fair and 
equal piece of work which you see, so life does not 



258 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

consist of one great action, but millions of little 
ones combined, and so may it be with your lives, 
no stitch dropped when duties are to be done, no 
widenings made when bad principles are to be re- 
proved, or economy is to be preserved, neither 
seaming nor narrowing when truth and gener- 
osity are in question; thus every stitch of life 
made right and set in the right place, neither too 
large or too small, too tight or too loose — thus 
may you keep on your smooth and even course, 
making existence one fair and consistent piece, un- 
til having both passed the heel, you come t(^ the 
very toe of life, and here, in the final narrowing 
off, and dropping the coil of tffis emblematical 
pair of warm companions, of comforting associ- 
ates, nothing appears but white, the token of inno- 
cence and peace, of purity and light; and may you, 
like these stockings, the final stitch being dropped 
and the work completed, go together from the 
place where you were formed, to a happier state 
of existence — a present from earth to heaven. 
Hoping these stockings and admonitions may 
meet a cordial reception, I remain, in true blue 
friendship, seemly, yet without seeming, yours 
from top to toe, 

Emma Willard." 

Mrs. Willard's husband died in May, 1825, 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 259 

four years after the establishment of the school. 
He was twenty-eight years older than she, and 
had been her helper in many ways, relieving her 
of the financial management of the school, being 
a wise counselor in all her perplexities, and fiUing 
the place of resident physician. From that time 
on, for twenty years until her retirement from the 
principalship, the entire management of the rap- 
idly growing school rested upon her shoulders. 

It is not within the purpose of this paper to 
sketch Mrs. Wlllard's activity and usefulness in 
many directions, as the author of numerous val- 
uable text books and other literature, as a poet of 
recognized ability, as an active friend of philan- 
thropy at home and abroad, as a leader in social 
and literary circles burdened with a large cor- 
respondence, as the discoverer and advocate of a 
new theory of the circulation of the blood which 
attracted at the time much attention, as the earnest 
supporter of every good cause, educational and 
patriotic, which had in view the diffusion of knowl- 
edge, the elevation of society, the progress of the 
State and the Nation, and the welfare of humanity. 
All these numerous and exacting activities, which 
were continued until her death in 1870 at the age 
of 83, and which made her, as another has said, 
" the representative woman of her generation," 
together with details of her unfortunate second 



26o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

marriage, which cast the shadow of a great dis- 
appointment upon her middle life, all these will 
'be found narrated in her complete biography. 
Her peculiar glory was the service she rendered 
to the education of her sex, in securing for it a 
more general recognition of its importance and a 
wider scope in its essential character. This serv- 
ice made her a benefactor worthy of special honor 
among all who believe in the value of education, 
and in the equal rights of all to its inestimable 
advantages. 

To Mrs. Willard's school were gathered pupils 
from far and near, many coming from the South, 
and from it she sent forth six thousand educated 
young women into the homes of our land, with 
such measure of education as they were able in- 
dividually to take on (or rather to take in, for edu- 
cation is not an external matter), of whom five 
hundred became teachers, who caught something 
of her spirit, and labored to carry out her purpose. 
It was not for her school alone that she labored 
and pleaded, but for the establishment of similar 
schools everywhere. Her thoughts were as broad 
as womanhood, and embraced her entire sex. 
She endeavored to show In Troy what could be 
done, what ought to be done, and what must be 
done for the education of woman. If she is to 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 261 

reach the summit of her development and useful- 
ness, the divine goal of her womanhood. 

Other influences have, of course, been at work, 
and other hands have been busy, but in the rapid 
progress and the large fruitage of these later 
years, it is only just to recognize the influence and 
the hand of the founder of the Troy Seminary. 
From this fountain have flowed streams, which 
have fertilized the soil out of which Vassar, 
Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Bryn Mawr, 
Radcliffe, Barnard, and other distinctive schools 
for young women have sprung blossomed-crowned 
into life, and from those eloquent walls on the 
banks of the upper Hudson has gone forth the 
authoritative mandate that has already opened 
the doors of many of our colleges to both sexes, 
upon equal terms and with equal privileges. 

Mount Holyoke Seminary was founded in 1837, 
and changed its name to College in 1888, Vassar 
College in 1861, Girton, the first English College, 
in 1870, Smith College in 1871, Wellesley in 1875, 
Radcliffe in 1879, Bryn Mawr in 1880, the Col- 
lege for Women in Western Reserve University 
In 1888, the Women's College in Brown Univer- 
sity, 1 89 1,* and Barnard In 1900. It should be 

* An early friend of the higher education of women In Rhode 
Island was John Kingsbury, LL.D. He was a Trustee and 
Fellow of Brown University from 1844 to 1874, the date of his 
death, and Secretary of the Corporation from 1853 until he died. 



262 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

remembered that an historic beginning in the di- 
rection of female education was made in Ohio in 
Oberlin Institute, as Oberlin College was first 
called, which was chartered in 1834. The his- 
torian says, however, that " the method of giving 
a College education to women and men together 
was not a primary thought. The primary thought 
was to give an education to women of the sort 
which they were fitted to receive. The condi- 
tions necessitated the giving of the education to 
both men and women upon equal terms." At 
the commencement in 1841 three women received 

In 1828 he founded in Providence a school which he called a 
" Young Ladies' High School," a term not yet employed in our 
system of public education, and which was a marked advance 
on anything provided for young women at that time. It was a 
private school, and probably attracted few pupils outside of 
Providence and its immediate vicinity. In it was oifered in- 
struction in history, advanced mathematics, and the ancient as 
well as modern languages. The movement called out not a little 
ridicule at the beginning, the boys on the street, as Mr. Kings- 
bury passed by, shouting in derision, " There goes the man who 
is teaching the girls Latin." The school room was furnished with 
a carpet and cloth-covered desks, and chairs in keeping with the 
other furnishings. Not a few citizens regarded the expenditure 
as money wasted. It attracted much attention and visitors from 
abroad on account of its novelty. Dr. Kingsbury conducted the 
school with notable success for thirty years. It was subsequently 
under the care of Professor John L. Lincoln of Brown Univer- 
sity, and later of Rev. Dr. John C. Stockbridge, much of the in- 
struction being given by Professors of the University. The school 
was continued until 1877. The name was changed by Prof, 
Lincoln to " Young Ladies' School," the term " High " having 
been adopted to designate a public school grade. It was the 
precursor of the Women's College in Brown University. 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 263 

degrees, the first women, it Is said, to receive the 
degree of Bachelor in Arts in the United States. 

Professor Wiinsterberg says, " To-day there is 
no need of defending the claims of women; the 
women themselves have declared with pride that 
the battle is now won. We no longer hear the 
old-fashioned pitiful arguments that the women 
have too small a brain for study, or that their 
health breaks down if they go through a college 
course, or that they lose charm and become un- 
womanly if their education goes beyond the finish- 
ing school, or that they are bad housekeepers and 
selfish mothers if they have too much intellectual 
training. All these exaggerations which belonged 
to a period of transition have melted away. The 
social prejudices have disappeared, and any one 
who should argue to-day against the principle of 
college education for women would appear a relic 
of by-gone times." 

The education of seventy-five years ago was not 
the education of to-day. The progress has been 
remarkable. It has been more than an evolution ; 
it has been a revolution. Mr. Welse, in his 
*' History of Troy," says that Mrs. Willard's 
school " had not at the time of its establishment 
Its equal in the United States," that Is, for the 
education of young women, and that she was " the 
first woman in America to place the standard of 



264 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

female education upon the same plane of study 
which was then pursued by young men in the 
various colleges and higher academies in the 
land." And her biographer, Dr. John Lord, tells 
us that, at first, Mrs. Willard was compelled to 
create her own text-books in certain branches of 
study, which possessed such excellence that they 
were widely used, and passed through many edi- 
tions. But the scope of education is far greater 
now than was possible then. The frontiers of 
human knowledge have been pushed farther and 
farther back. New sciences have been discovered, 
and old ones have been greatly modified and ex- 
tended. New studies have been introduced, and 
better methods and improved apparatus. The 
curriculum has been reconstructed and enlarged 
many times, and the standard has been immensely 
elevated. Colleges that were only colleges in 
name are now such in fact, and a few are prop- 
erly called Universities, probably as many as will 
be necessary to meet the demand for years to come. 
In nothing probably within the memory of living 
men and women have there been changes so great, 
improvements so marked, advances so noteworthy, 
as in the matter of education. In saying this it 
is not necessarily implied that all changes that 
have been Introduced In our educational system 
and methods, have been In the direction of gen- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 265 

uine and unquestioned Improvement. There must 
be some just reason for doubt and criticism, when 
so thoughtful and sane an educator as Dean Briggs 
of Cambridge is prompted to invent and give pub- 
licity to the phrase " old fashioned doubts con- 
cerning new fashioned education." 

It should be remembered also that progress in 
knowledge In these recent years, of which we make 
our boast, has been largely confined to the natural 
or physical sciences, to the discovery and utiliza- 
tion of the facts and forces of nature, to inven- 
tion and the increased comfort of living. The 
standards of art, architecture, literature, philos- 
ophy and religion are all in the past, and all 
students of these branches of knowledge are com- 
pelled still to sit at the feet of the old masters. 

But in all this actual progress, these vaster re- 
sources, these multiplied faclhtles, Mrs. Willard's 
ideal has not been outgrown, nor can it be ever 
outgrown. It was, to use her words, " the per- 
fection of the moral and intellectual nature of 
woman." It was not the mere accumulation of 
knowledge, but it was the effect which all good 
learning should have upon the discipline, the 
growth, the expansion, the moral elevation of the 
mind itself. To the realization of this lofty Ideal 
all knowledge known and to be known, all fresh 
discoveries in science, all progress in education 



266 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

by the Increase of its contents or the improvement 
of its methods were to 'be made to contribute. 
Mrs. Willard looked upon education not as an 
end, but as a means, and all enlargement of the 
means would have the same sublime, spiritual end 
in view. 

Professor Henry Fowler in an article on " The 
Educational Services of Mrs. Willard," published 
in the American Journal of Education in 1859, 
said very justly — " She is preeminently a repre- 
sentative woman, who suitably typefies the great 
movement of the nineteenth century for the eleva- 
tion of woman. Her life has been consecrated 
to the education and advancement of her sex, or 
rather we might say that the Christian elevation 
of woman has been the life itself." Mrs. Wil- 
lard, therefore, seems to have been a pioneer not 
only in her efforts for the higher education of her 
sex, but in her views of the true aim of all educa- 
tion. 

Ex-Chancellor E. Benjamin Andrews, of the 
University of Nebraska, in an article published 
a few years since in an Educational Review, de- 
clared that a change is now taking place in the 
conception of the nature and aims of true educa- 
tion. The old encyclopaedic idea which made it 
little more than the mere amassing of knowledge, 
is passing away. The aim which is now coming 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 267 

to be accepted, he defined as fourfold, viz., first, 
" character," secondly, '^ culture," that is, refine- 
ment, a love for the beautiful in art, nature, litera- 
ture and conduct, thirdly, " critical power," and 
fourthly, " ability to work by rule," in other words, 
to bring things to pass; but character first. Edu- 
cation according to this definition is the cultivation 
and development of one's intellectual and moral 
powers, refinement of soul, an increased relish, in 
Edmund Burke's phrase, for " the true, the beau- 
tiful and the good," self-control, self-mastery for 
worthy ends, the concentration of life and its 
forces for the attainment of noble objects and 
lofty ideals. Dr. Andrews went so far as to say 
that '' All reflecting persons are coming to feel 
that unless schooling makes pupils morally better, 
purer and sweeter, kinder and stronger in out- 
ward conduct, it is unworthy the name." 

I refer thus at length to Dr. Andrews' article 
In order to say that where leading educators are 
now coming to stand, Mrs. Willard stood clearly 
and strongly seventy-five years ago. Let me re- 
call her words. " Education should seek to bring 
its subjects to the perfection of their moral, in- 
tellectual and physical nature in order that they 
may be of the greatest possible use to themselves 
and others," a comprehensive and wholly admir- 
able definition, upon which it would be diflicult to 



268 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

improve, and which is worthy to be inscribed in 
letters of gold over the entrance of every seminary 
and college in the land. 

Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, an early graduate of 
Vassar College, and the first female student in 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who 
became an eminent teacher in the Institute and 
an active promoter of the higher education of her 
sex, adopted in her College course as a sacred rule 
of life, " I must keep the body in good condition 
to do the bidding of the spirit." 

Mrs. Willard in her broad plan for the perfec- 
tion of her sex, did not overlook the physical needs, 
though she had few or none of the artificial helps 
found in the schools of to-day. A recent writer 
on physical training for women says, *' In many 
respects the gymnasium of a girls' college is equal 
to that of any other college. The girl students 
have their boat clubs and regattas, into which they 
enter with as much spirit as if the scene were New 
London, and the event the ' varsity ' race. While 
the girl students built up brain cells by study, they 
also gain muscle by exercise, and the girl college 
graduate of the present day can put up a dumb bell 
as neatly and proficiently as she can analyze the 
teachings of Kant or Schlegel. In fact she does 
the one all the better for having done the other. 
In addition, the game of tennis has served to de- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 269 

velop broader chests and stronger muscles. The 
bicycle and tricycle have won many young women 
into knowing the delights of a healthy spin along 
country roads. There is much reason for satis- 
faction In this Increase of health and vigor in 
womankind, all the more so as too many young 
men of the present day have not shown the same 
eagerness toward physical development. It Is to 
be hoped that the narrow chested, thin, cigarette- 
smoking young man who is too often seen on the 
city streets, may be shamed into athletic training 
by his sense of physical Inferiority, when com- 
pared with the girls of to-day, who can walk two 
miles to his one, and who show In every move- 
ment the perfect health which he lacks." 

This position of Mrs. Wlllard, which laid 
proper emphasis upon provisions for securing 
soundness of body, has been endorsed by all later 
friends of female education, and In no colleges do 
we find better equipped gymnasiums, and better 
average health, and more buoyant spirits than in 
the colleges for young women. This Mrs. Wll- 
lard believed to be absolutely essential to the suc- 
cess of the second Item In her comprehensive^ 
scheme, viz., the training of the Intellectual to t^e 
highest point of development and culture. Andk 
then above all, she Insisted that the moral nature, \ 
which is the highest element in personality, should 



270 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

be brought under such enlightenment and disci- 
pline as to bring It more and more Into harmony 
with the laws of right-being and right-living, and 
the known will of the Maker of us all. 

But even this was not, in Mrs. Willard's plan, 
the ultimate purpose of the higher education. 
But the whole nature, thus disciplined and per- 
fected, was to become a tempered and polished 
instrument for '' the greatest possible uses " to 
humanity. Long years before the word '* altru- 
ism " was invented, Mrs. Wlllard was an altruist 
of the purest type. No harp, however complete 
and exquisite Its workmanship, performs Its mis- 
sion until it gladdens and Inspires human souls 
with the melody of Its music. No human mind, 
however well-trained and furnished, fulfills the 
high and holy purpose of its being and Its train- 
ing, until it takes Its place among the active forces 
of life for the comfort, the help, the uplifting of 
humanity. The angels of the Christian faith, 
resplendent with supernatural light and beauty, 
are represented as messengers of God, " minister- 
ing spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall 
be heirs of salvation." The more exalted the life 
of woman can be made, the more angelic will be 
her ministry on the earth. Mrs. Wlllard dis- 
tinctly recognized and suitably emphasized the 
moral and religious element In a complete educa- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 271 

tlon. She persistently excluded all sectarianism 
from her Seminary; but she made it a Christian 
school, pervaded by a Christian atmosphere, in 
which the Christian faith was held up as the in- 
spiration to all noble living, and the Christian 
graces as the perfection of all highest character. 

All knowledge, rightly apprehended, centers in 
God. History is but the record of God's deal- 
ings with the human race in its progressive devel- 
opment. Literature is but the expression of 
thought and life as it is lived in harmony with or 
apart from God. Philosophy is " the knowledge 
of phenomena as explained by, or resolved into, 
causes and reasons, powers and laws," all of 
which are traceable to the great First Cause. 
Science is the systematic and orderly arrangement 
of facts and principles, in the realms of matter and 
force and mind, which discloses the results of 
God's operations or methods of his activity. The 
true scientist is, as has been beautifully said, sim- 
ply *' thinking God's thoughts after Him." Ex- 
President Eliot has strikingly defined the true pur- 
pose of scientific education in these words: "I 
have never been able to find any better answer to 
the question, What is the chief end of studying 
nature? than the answer which the Westminster 
Catechism gives to the question. What is the chief 
end of man? namely, to glorify God and enjoy 



272 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

Him forever.'^ Knowledge and wisdom ought to 
be one and the same thing, and would be, were It 
not for the perversity of human hearts, so that 
knowledge has come to mean the accumulation of 
facts, and wisdom the right use of them. As 
Cowper says, 

" Knowledge and wisdom far from being one, 
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men, 
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, 
The mere material with which wisdom builds, 
Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place. 
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. 
Knowledge is proud that it has learned so much; 
Wisdom is humble that it knows no more." 

He who finds knowledge, then, finds facts about 
God, the Infinite Spirit, the essential Life, by 
whom all things consist. He who finds wisdom 
finds God. The man who by common consent Is 
denominated '^ the wise man," affirmed, " The 
fear of the Lord Is the beginning of wisdom." In 
the broadest sense, Christ who was the Word, the 
utterance of God, the manifestation of his wis- 
dom as well as his power and love, could say, " I 
am the truth." Kaulbach, In his famous cartoon 
of the Reformation, grouped all the Intellectual 
activity of the seventeenth century around Luther 
and the open Bible, the sun which, unveiled, il- 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 273 

lumlnated the mind, and quickened it into life, and 
at the same time was the center around which all 
good learning revolved, and toward which it grav- 
itated. 

Christianity, which is the synonym of light and 
wisdom; which has been the mother of schools 
as well as of churches ; which has founded colleges 
and universities ; which has stimulated thought and 
inquiry; which has pushed on investigation and 
discovery; which has given birth to scholars and 
libraries and literatures; which has insisted that 
all history and all realms of truth and all worlds 
of matter are the legitimate field of man's explora- 
tions; which has taught that wisdom is the her- 
itage of the people, that the right to know is the 
inalienable right of every man and every woman, 
and that knowledge should be as free as the light 
and the air, and is as essential to man's normal 
and healthy development, bases its primary argu- 
ment for education upon the nature and immortal- 
ity of the soul itself. Its capacity for growth is 
one of the strongest scientific evidences for the 
soul's immortality, and its immortality is one of the 
strongest arguments for its highest present edu- 
cation. The folly of education upon any low, un- 
spiritual, materialistic conception of man is finely 
expressed by Tennyson in the familiar words. 



274 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

" We are not cunning casta of clay, 
Let science prove we are, and then 
What matters science unto men, 
At least to me; I will not stay, 
For I was made for better things." 

The effect of present wise training will endure 
throughout eternity. Mental development and 
enlargement, the cultivation of the intellectual and 
moral powers, personal growth in this life, fit the 
mind inevitably for a higher destiny in the life to 
come. We may well shrink from going through 
this life and out into eternity with dwarfed or 
stunted powers, and be eager to know and to grow 
until the germ of manhood and womanhood within 
us shall expand into the large ideal and perfect 
type, which is held up before us by the great 
Teacher. Religion reveals to us the sublime 
thought of God with reference to us, and the sub- 
lime possibilities of development that are shut up 
in every human spirit. 

How narrow and belittling, then, is that theory 
of education, which is sometimes called the utili- 
tarian, which limits itself to practical studies, that 
can be converted into silver and gold, and bread 
and butter, to the useful branches of knowledge 
as they are called, and overlooks the immortal 
mind and its discipline and progress, and puts a 
higher value upon material prosperity than it does 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 275 

upon developed manhood and womanhood I You 
all recall good Bishop Bienvenu, that ideal por- 
traiture of saint and philosopher combined, drawn 
by Victor Hugo in " Les Miserables." He denied 
himself of every unnecessary comfort, and shared 
the hardships and poverty of his flock. The only 
luxury he would tolerate was his garden. This 
he kept in exquisite order. His haughty house- 
keeper reproved him, saying, " You who turn 
everything to account have at least one useless 
spot. It would be better to grow salads there 
than bouquets." " Madam," retorted the good 
Bishop, '' you are mistaken. The beautiful is as 
useful as the useful," and after a pause he added, 
" More so, perhaps." 

And how narrow is that view of education 
which sometimes obtained in the past, which said 
education is for the few and not for all, as if all 
souls were not equally immortal, and were not 
possessed of equal needs, and endowed with like 
possibilities I And how narrow and indefensible 
would be any theory of education which made a 
distinction in sex, and provided a more abundant 
and extended course of instruction for boys than 
for girls, as if all minds were not of equal value 
and duration, and as if the progress of the human 
race was not, under God, more dependent upon 
the broad intelligence, the high refinement, the 



276 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

generous culture of woman than upon any other 
one thing conceivable. 

President Dwight, in an article in the Forum, 
has well said, " So long as education is conceived 
of as valuable merely for its uses, or as desirable 
simply as fitting a person for his individual and 
peculiar work, the higher education of women may 
find many to oppose it with objections which may 
have, perchance, seeming reasonableness. . . . 
But if education is for the growth of the human 
mind, the personal human mind, and if the glory 
of it is in the upbuilding and outbuilding of the 
mind, the womanly mind is just as important, just 
as beautiful, just as much a divine creation, with 
wide-reaching possibilities, as is the manly mind." 

There are two views of education, or perhaps 
I should say, two opposite tendencies, not alto- 
gether unknown in our day, that are equally erro- 
neous and indefensible. First, a thoroughly self- 
ish view that exhausts the benefits of education 
upon one's self, that leads to a life of exclusiveness 
and separation, that disconnects a man from poli- 
tics and the duties of citizenship, and a woman 
from the plain duties of home, and the responsi- 
bilities of social life, and the demands of charity, 
that makes both men and women " impractica- 
bles " and *' impossibles," and makes life a sort 
of useless, monastic, transcendental existence. 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 277 

Mrs. Russell, the brilliant daughter of Father 
Taylor of Boston, described the transcendentalists, 
who separated themselves in the little select, lit- 
erary Brook Farm experiment, as " a race, who 
dove into the infinite, soared into the illimitable, 
and never paid cash." An education which takes 
one's feet out of the ordinary paths of life, and 
prevents one from dealing in its customary cur- 
rency and meeting its common obligations, has no 
justification for its existence in this work-a-day 
world of ours. President Henry Churchill King 
of Oberlin College has wisely said, " Just this, 
then, is the function of the college, to teach in the 
broadest way the fine art of living, to give the best 
preparation that organized education can give, for 
entering wisely and unselfishly into the complex 
relations of life, and for furthering unselfishly 
and efiiciently social progress." 

A second peril to which we are exposed at the 
present time, and it may be called the great edu- 
cational peril of two continents, is that of exalting 
the practical side of education in such a way as to 
belittle the cultural and spiritual side, to determine 
the character of education and measure its value 
by its ability to coin itself into material possessions, 
and minister to the bustling, noisy activities of our 
age, forgetting that refinement, taste, beauty and 
strength of character are the choicest possessions 



278 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

of the soul, and the richest fruits of liberal culture ; 
indeed, without which there is no liberal culture. 

Professor Huxley's definition of " a liberal edu- 
cation," expressed in what Sir Oliver Lodge calls 
" a magnificent sentence," is as follows: "That 
man, I think, has had a liberal education who has 
been so trained in youth that his body is the ready 
servant of the will, and does with ease and pleas- 
ure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable 
of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, 
with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth 
working order; ready, like a steam-engine, to be 
turned to any kind of work, and spin gossamers 
as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose 
mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and 
fundamental truths of nature and the laws of her 
operations ; one, who, no stunted ascetic, is full of 
life and fire, but whose passions are trained to 
come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a 
tender conscience; who has learned to love all 
beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all 
vileness, and to respect others as himself. Such 
an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal 
education." 

Arthur C. Benson in his able and discriminating 
*' Life of Walter Pater," accounts for Pater's lack 
of appreciation at Oxford, his Alma Mater, and 
the University, in which most of his life was spent, 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 279 

in this way, '' Moreover it is fair to say that the 
air of the Universities is not at the present mo- 
ment favorable to the pursuit of Belles lettres and 
artistic philosophies. The praise of academical 
circles is reserved at the present time for people 
of brisk, bursarial and business qualifications, for 
men of high technical accomplishment, for exact 
researchers, for effective teachers of prescribed 
subjects, for men of acute and practical minds, 
rather than for men of imaginative qualities. 
This is the natural price that must be paid for the 
(so-called) increased efficiency of our Universi- 
ties, though it may be regretted that they main- 
tain so slight a hold upon the literary influence of 
the day. The whole atmosphere is, in fact, 
sternly critical, and the only work which is em- 
phatically recognized and approved, is the work 
which makes definite and unquestionable additions 
to the progress of exact sciences." And Ferris 
Greenslet in his appreciation of the same English 
scholar, says, " This is the sum of Pater's Cy- 
renaic philosophy of life. Its plea was for a sys- 
tem of morals as living and flexible as life itself, 
and for a recognition of the importance of " be- 
ing " as well as " doing." Such considerations 
have perennial value, but especial significance in 
an age like ours, when it is so fatally easy to 



28o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

glorify over much great aggregations of horse- 
power, men of high voltage, and the efficient life." 

This language portrays to us most strikingly 
the tendencies in the mother country. In like 
manner President Thwing, deploring the sadly di- 
minished effect of the forces of the American Uni- 
versity on American literature in these recent 
decades, declares, " The reason lies in the ab- 
sorption of men in things material. In the former 
age men gave themselves to ideas; they now give 
themselves to things. The reason is that this is 
an age of materialism; it is the time of the reign 
of the exterior senses. The voice of the imag- 
ination is hushed. The altar fires of the creative 
imagination are burned out, and in their place are 
the fires of the steamship boiler and of the mogul 
locomotive." 

An Eastern college which has had an honored 
history for more than a hundred years as a clas- 
sical school, laying special emphasis upon the hu- 
manities, graduated at a recent commencement 
thirty-five men with the following degrees. Three 
received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, three the 
degree of Bachelor of Philosophy, two the 
degree of Bachelor of Science, and twenty-seven 
the degree of Bachelor of Engineering. This is 
an extreme case; but it is symptomatic. 

Professor Munsterberg declares, " There are 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 281 

too many who fancy that everything which is not 
directly useful for the vocational technique is a 
waste of time and energy. They have stuffed our 
colleges with practical subjects, and have allowed 
far-reaching choice of courses in the high schools 
under the one point of view that only that which 
is directly applicable to the future trade can be 
worth while. If this tendency were to win the 
day, the life work would be built up on thinner 
and thinner foundations of real culture, and our 
society would be more and more threatened by 
uneducated experts. The whole cultural level of 
our community would sink, . . . the value of this 
whole fabric and the worthiness of our social life 
would rapidly diminish." 

A sad day will it be for our colleges and uni- 
versities, when the spiritual is crowded out by the 
material, when the humanities are driven to the 
wall by the so-called practical studies, when re- 
finement and culture are at a discount and busi- 
ness efficiency at a premium, when things are of 
more value than high ideals and noble aspirations, 
when the noise of machinery and the shouts of 
the athletic field put an end to " the still air of 
delightful studies," when physical strength counts 
for more than moral strength and intellectual at- 
tainment, when the popular applause is given nbt 
to the successful student but to the successful 



282 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

athlete, when the colleges are no longer able to 
produce Longfellows, and Hawthornes, and 
Lowells, and John Hays, because they have lost 
the mold; In a word, when they cease to be pre- 
eminently the homes of elegant culture. If that 
day should ever come, which may God forbid, 
then we shall look to the colleges for young women 
to preserve the lofty aims, the high spiritual ideals, 
the garnered and priceless results of a liberal edu- 
cation. 

In the University of Minnesota from the gradu- 
ates of 1 9 10 the Phi Beta Kappa Society, whose 
members are elected on the basis of scholarly at- 
tainments and literary proficiency, elected to mem- 
bership thirteen women and four men. President 
Tucker of Dartmouth College, speaking of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, said: "The curator took 
me from alcove to alcove, and uncovered first the 
manuscript of Lord Bacon's Novum Organum, 
and in turn, the manuscript of Milton's Paradise 
Lost, the manuscript of Newton's Principla, a 
canto of Byron's Childe Harold, Tennyson's 
In Memoriam and Thackeray's Henry Esmond, 
all the product of One College in one University," 
and then he added, " England may multiply her 
wealth, and increase her navy and expand her em- 
pire, and she will still live more surely in the names 
which will outlast her power." Ambassador 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 283 

James Bryce, In his admirable volume on South 
America, declares " The world to-day is ruled 
by physical science and business." And again he 
says in the same volume, " There Is a sense in 
which Shakespeare is a greater glory to England 
than the Empire of India. Homer and Virgil, 
Plato and Tacitus are a gift made by the ancient 
world to all the ages, more precious, because more 
enduring, than any achievements in war, or gov- 
ernment, or commerce." 

This distinguished scholar and publicist In a 
commencement address at the University of Wis- 
consin, uttered a much needed word of caution 
against the all-absorbing pursuit of so-called prac- 
tical studies. " Whatever a nation achieves, what- 
ever a university achieves, is the result of patient 
observation, close reasoning, and, let me add, of 
the love of knowledge for its own sake; for the 
man who is bent only on finding what Is primarily 
profitable will miss many a path at the end of 
which there stands the figure of Truth, with all 
the rewards she has to bestow. Just as any na- 
tion which should force Its children to narrow 
their energies to purely gainful alms, would soon 
fall behind Its competitors, and see Its Intellectual 
life fade and wither, so any university which sac- 
rificed its teaching of the theory of science to the 
teaching of the practical applications of science 



284 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS 

would be unworthy of its high calling, and would 
handle even the practical part of its work less 
effectively. The loss of a high ideal means the 
loss of aspiration, of faith, of vital force." 

Professor Willcox of Cornell University, rec- 
ognizing the inappropriateness of old definitions 
to modern conditions, says, " The most vital need 
of college education throughout America is the 
formulation and application of some definition of 
liberal education which will apply to new condi- 
tions," which virtually means some definition which 
will deceive us into the belief that the new educa- 
tion contains all the elements of broadening cul- 
ture, and liberal training, and spiritual refinement 
possessed by the old. New definitions will not 
alter the nature of things, or endow with spiritual 
life that which is of the earth earthy. 

*' In the world but not of it " should bfe as true 
of culture as of religion. " In it " to elevate, 
purify and ennoble its life, to exalt and spiritualize 
its aims, and inspire it with the love of worthy 
objects of human pursuit; but "not of it," unin- 
fluenced by its low and debasing ideals, free from 
its bondage to the material and the sensual, and 
superior to its vulgar pleasures and its sordid and 
perishable gains. 

In conclusion, I desire to say that continued in- 
tellectual progress and moral improvement should 



MRS. EMMA WILLARD 285 

be the distinct and unweakening purpose of life. 
Seminaries and colleges can at best only lay the 
foundations of an education. All life must be 
building the superstructure. The roof of our 
schoolhouse Is the broad heavens above us, and 
the whole system of nature and Providence, of 
moral government and divine grace revealed In 
Jesus Christ, under which we live, is an educa- 
tional system. He who ceases to learn and to 
grow, is unworthy to live, and to have the vast 
opportunities of life. Heaven is the home of 
successful and victorious students, " disciples," 
that is, learners, the New Testament calls them, 
who have diligently and faithfully learned the 
truths of God In nature, in philosophy. In human 
experience and in divine Revelation, and felt their 
quickening and expanding, purifying and maturing 
Influence on their souls. The dying Goethe is said 
to have asked for more light. Light, knowledge, 
truth, which may be converted Into faith, Into 
character. Into service, Into victory, into eternal 
possessions, this should be the perpetual cry of 
every immortal spirit, made In the image of God. 



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